


Gold and Gold and Gold, Again

by TinyBeautifulTales



Category: One Direction (Band), The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Realism, Minor Character Death, Uh... It's a Song of Achilles AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyBeautifulTales/pseuds/TinyBeautifulTales
Summary: It’s like this: sometimes, the story ends the wrong way because you’re fighting so hard to change it. It’s like this: Harry knows, in every piece of himself, that he shouldn’t have stolen Louis’ armor, that he shouldn’t be on this field with Hector. It’s like this: the way that Louis smiles at him across their darkened tent, the points of his canine teeth in the meat of Harry’s inner thigh, the sunlight behind Louis’ head as he bends down to kiss Harry before he goes to talk to the war council. It’s like this: they are lucky to be born as two pieces of a whole. It’s like this: Harry is so tired of running. It’s like this: the sun’s glare scorches his eyes.(A Song of Achilles AU)
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 15
Kudos: 46





	1. Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everybody! I've been writing this for years. It was honestly first inspired by Wade, who used to be at tippingvelvet. Not sure if they'd like to be associated with this mess, but. Thanks for the original idea, Wade. And Hima! Who used to be at dykesforlouis. Thank you for the headcanons. They always inspired me too.

In the beginning, Gemma will allow Harry his hazy, sepia toned memories of their mother. It'll be pity, mostly, Harry's own inability to remember the woman who wouldn’t even hold him when he was born. When he’s older he’ll recognize Gemma's brand of self preservation- her silvered hair, the morse code letters on her wrist, her worn bomber jacket- his fiercely protective, fiercely hurt sister. Harry will understand how brightly Gemma's desire to protect their mother burned. 

He’s fifteen when he finally realizes that the woman sitting at the kitchen table with her head on her hands, sifting through a pile of tiny blue pills is not alright. His dad will be out campaigning, always another group of constituents to convince of his ability to be governor, and his mom will be in the eerily silent, darkened house all alone. She will not startle when he stumbles into their kitchen, will not even glance up. 

He’s sixteen when his mom finally succeeds in not being his mom anymore. His dad will make flimsy excuses while Harry and Gemma stand behind him dressed all in black, and Harry will remember the following month in snatches: Gemma’s tight lipped smile, the small  _ a _ she’ll ink into her hip, the boy with a pack of smokes constantly hanging out of his back pocket who holds Gemma a little too close at school. The way that Harry will ache for that kind of softness. 

Mostly, Harry will remember the woman who held him at night when he couldn’t sleep and whispered, “Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you, sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you, but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.” 

Harry isn’t good at dealing with his emotions, especially when he’s spent his entire life confused about what exactly was wrong with his mom. There’ve never been any answers, whether because his father was in the public eye or because he is hurting too badly. Harry withdraws, like if he can just make a big enough hollow place in his chest, his mom’s life can be recreated there, better and brighter. 

There are girls, who his father tries to introduce him to, like a set of bony hips will hammer the sadness out of him, will hammer the disappointment out of his father’s eyes. It never works like that. Harry feels bereft and ridiculous, flirting for votes for his father that he doesn’t care about. His father is maybe the worst part of the whole situation: the campaigning never stops, the endless cycle of press conferences and talk shows and drumming up sympathy over a woman who he privately calls simple.  _ She never understood, Harry. _

Gemma doesn’t try to pick him out of it, is too trapped up in her own cycle of self destruction.

Harry's seventeen, picking his cuticles bloody, trying to figure out a chemistry problem, when he meets Louis. The library has become his hiding place. The librarian is kind to him, doesn’t badger him about his dad or his mom, and he can usually buy himself a little time by hiding out between the shelves of books. 

Today, the normal group of boys who try to cajole a response out of him are snickering behind their hands while goading Harry with things like, “How’s your mom today, Harry? How’s she doing? Your dad probably killed her, didn’t he? Didn’t want her to ruin his campaign?” 

Harry can feel himself tense into a ramrod straight posture, the book between his hands clutched so tightly that he might rip it. He does not respond other than to turn his head away. His eyes are probably glittering, he knows, but he won’t give them the satisfaction of a response. He’s never quite expecting the ways that these boys are able to find the fleshy parts of him and stab. He's seventeen, and although time has passed, the words still cut him to the quick. The words still take his breath away with their needless cruelty. 

“Probably started cheating on your dad or something and he had to get rid of her.” 

“Yeah!” One of the other boys laughs, high and cruel, a foot nudging into Harry's leg, “Was she a slut?” 

Breathing through the panic welling in his throat, the fear and sadness, Harry turns back to them and prays,  _ pleads,  _ with himself to keep his voice steady, “You have no right to talk about my mo—”

It happens faster than Harry can really process it: there are three boys, and then there are two standing, one on the floor under a smaller boy’s Vans. He’s squirming like there’s a lot of pressure on his chest, panting and clutching at the ankle attached to the foot, while the boy holding him down makes bored tutting noises. The other two boys are wide eyed and silent. Even though they’re in the library, the absence of taunts feels deafening in Harry's ears. He's relieved and feels himself sagging back against the bookshelf behind him as the smaller boy turns to the two standing boys. He’s never seen this person before -- not in any of his classes, not in the neighborhood -- and an endless well of grief and gratefulness opens in his chest. 

“If I ever hear you saying things like that to anyone ever again, I will personally get you kicked out.” 

“Yeah, right,” the boy on the floor huffs. 

If the way he suddenly gasps for air and flails is any indication, this was exactly the wrong decision. His friends lurch forward at his very genuine panicking noises, his very genuine, wide eyed fear. The boy who is holding him down raises a hand in the boys’ direction.

“Not the best choice, shit for brains. Did I make myself clear?” 

They all nod jerkily, rushed “of course, yeahs” breaking the monotony of the boy on the floors’ panting. 

“Leave,” his foot doesn’t move, even as he turns to point at the door out of the library, “and remember what I said. I don’t like having to repeat myself.” 

Pushing at each other’s backs, hustling like the library is on fire, the two boys scamper out. Their ruckus makes the librarian pin hard glares to their backs, and Harry is pretty sure he’s found a permanent safe spot, because she won’t be letting them back in here if they don’t come with a class.

He turns back to watching the boy still lying pinned to the floor. 

“If you ever say things like that again, I’ll make sure you don’t speak ever again,” the boy threatens, lofty and bored, “we don’t need to have another encounter like this, I think we both agree.”

Even pinned to the floor, Harry can see the furious way the boy nods. 

“When I lift my foot, you’ll leave. Same threat to you. I’ll make sure you don’t do any more speaking.” 

Harry watches from between his spiked, wet eyelashes as the frightened boy jerks up from the floor and runs out of the library. The librarian’s glare burns after him. Anxiety and anger drains out of Harry more slowly than it used to. He fears that the boys will come back now, armed with the knowledge that someone else is fighting for him, that he’s too weak to fight back. 

“Are you alright?” 

Embarrassingly, Harry gasps around one of his own sobs. Something about this boy’s unassuming, unasked for affection reminds Harry of his mom. Abruptly, more sharply than ever, Harry misses her. Sitting in the library with his arms wrapped around his own torso, Harry feels like his chest could cave in with the force of his own grief. He’s been feeling this, the breaking waves of loneliness and anger, for years now. They do not get any better. Every day is a fresh reminder: mom is gone. 

“Hey, hey,” the boy is sinking down across from Harry, touching a hesitant hand to his knee, “It’s going to be okay. ‘s going to—”

Harry sniffles against his hand, “No.” His forehead is feverish to the touch, “No, it’s not.” He isn’t even embarrassed by the slurry, thick way his words are coming out. This boy doesn’t seem like he would wield this moment against Harry or like he would tell an authority figure who would endanger his father’s political career, and finally being honest about how he feels makes the pressure in Harry's chest ease. 

“Why not?” 

At the genuine concern in the boy’s voice, Harry looks up. He’s swiping at the places under his eyes with his rough sweater sleeves when the boy, with his golden skin and cerulean eyes, reaches across the space between them. Gently nudging a teardrop off of Harry's cheek with his thumb, the boy says, “It’s not always going to be this hard.” He's tender in a way that reminds Harry almost painfully of his mom. 

“How d’you know?” His voice sounds too loud, too sad within the aisle they’ve secluded themselves in. 

The boy, a single side of his mouth drawn up in a rueful little smile, shakes his head, “It can’t always be this hard. Or people wouldn’t do it.” 

Harry thinks of his father, standing behind a podium and saying empty words about meaningless things, standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night with a snifter of brandy in his hand. He thinks of Gemma: her silvered hair and her collarbone tattoos and the roses of color that bloom on her cheeks in the summer, her absolute refusal to visit their mom’s grave. Harry doesn’t know if things ever get easier or harder or whether they’ve just learned to cope. He shrugs, self-consciously picking at the ends of his sweater. Now that things have settled and the panic has receded, he feels silly for crying at school and silly for his blotchy, hot face. Sillier still, for letting words get beneath his skin like they always do. 

The bell ringing startles him into looking back at the boy. 

“Are you okay?” His blue eyes squint with concern. 

For long moments, Harry listens to the rustling of students packing up their things and going to their next classes. The familiarity calms him. He nods, curls bobbing in his periphery. 

“Good.” 

* * *

“What are you doing here?” 

Across from him, leant against the other bookshelf, the boy looks up at him with a sleepy, inquisitive frown, “D’you want me to leave?” 

“No,” Harry feels safer with him here, even if he knows that the bullies won’t be coming back for anything more. His cheeks flare red, and he ducks back into his book, trying to look busy, so that the blue-eyed, sharp-cheeked boy leaning against the bookshelves doesn’t see. Harry has been looking for this boy around the school like it is his new job. He’s tried to be inconspicuous, but Gemma is still giving him looks when she thinks that he’s not watching her. Harry waits a few moments and two yawns from the boy before asking, “Why are you so tired?” 

The boy stifles a laugh into the back of his hand, “Why do you have so many questions?” 

Harry's entire face goes hotter as he looks down at the history textbook spread out in his lap. He hadn’t meant to be pushy or to make this boy think that he was unwelcome here. Twitching a hand back through his hair, Harry thinks about when he lost his ability to interact with people honestly, when he began to be on high alert, always, for signs of people looking to betray him. Harry waits for the boy to stand up and leave with a lump in his throat. 

“My mom visited last night.” 

Without schooling his expression of open curiosity, Harry looks up. It is rare for people to admit to the turmoil in their lives and, absurdly, Harry feels a bit better knowing that other people experience some degree of difficulty. He has spent the past few years being the sad boy, the strange boy, the boy with a dead mom. there is a kinship, suddenly, in the space between them. 

“Are your parents divorced?” Harry nearly covers his mouth with a hand as soon as the words are out of his mouth. 

Something unreadable passes over the boy’s face, “They’re separated, currently.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” the boy’s lips quirk into a practiced smile that has Harry grinning back, nearly forgetting about their previous conversation, “Can I ask you a question?”

Harry thinks seriously about it. He isn't an open book, but there are enough parts of his life that he’s alright talking about that he thinks he’s safe. Thumbing at the end of his sweater, he nods, the history textbook in his lap forgotten. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Harry,” his grin is grudgingly amused. A name is harmless, “What’s yours?” 

“Louis.” 

Harry tries to go back to reading, like everything is normal, while he frantically turns the boy’s name over and over in his head. He is pretending to read, when he hears the other boy repeating his name, quietly, “Harry,” his name sounds softer, more familiar, when Louis says it. His dad is always saying his name like it’s dirty, like it’s cursed, and Gemma says it in a worn, exasperated way when she’s home, “Would you like to eat lunch with me tomorrow? In the cafeteria?” 

It's been months since Harry has ventured into that room. There are always too many people, too many voices, too many stares. Being the center of attention makes Harry flush embarrassingly. Frustrated with himself for being so weak, Harry begins to breathe faster. His palms are sweating. He's working himself up into a panic attack until Louis’ hand lands on his knee. 

“We can stay here, yeah?” Louis’ eyes are locked on his trembling fingers, “We don’t have to go anywhere.” 

* * *

It becomes ritual: sitting across from each other in the library, pretending to read textbooks before they lapse into easy conversation. Louis is good at keeping things light, and Harry doesn’t ever feel pressured into discussing his life in a way that makes him open up. They steer clear of their moms, as if by some mutual agreement, but their fathers are not off limits. 

Louis talks about his dad like he’s a good man: he’s the governor of their town. A well-respected man who likes to run and cook and sail, a tan, blond haired man with a dignified smile, and it’s not a lie. Harry keeps quiet. When the urge to talk about his father becomes too much, he pinches at the skin on the palm of his hand. There are small, bloody red marks there. Louis never comments, but Harry sees him looking. 

The longer they spend together, the more apparent it becomes to Harry that Louis is actually popular at their school. Students have begun to peek their heads through the book shelves and talk to Louis, their voices raised higher than the librarian likes, their haircuts all blurring in Harry’s mind. When it first begins, Harry expects Louis to leave him be. They will have this aisle of the library, and everything will go back to how it used to be. 

Instead, Louis acknowledges the people before immediately turning his steady gaze back to Harry. It’s the attention, maybe, or the kindness, maybe, or the way that Louis stares at him when he’s trying to read his book until he blushes and hides, bashful, something twisting up warmly in his tummy. 

A month passes before Louis brings up the lunchroom again. This time, Harry says yes. 

* * *

Walking into the cafeteria with Louis at his side is a lot like walking into a campaigning event beside his father. People turn to stare without actually looking at them, and voices go softer, like the whisper of grass across his palms, when they walk by. People greet Louis without even glancing at Harry. That stings, even though he knows what people think of him: that crazy boy, that sad boy, that gay boy, that politician’s son. Harry presses closer to Louis in an effort to disappear into his jacket. 

“It’s loud in here,” Louis murmurs as they sink into a table near the windows, “Forgot how crazy it could be when we were in the library.'' His warm smile makes the knot in Harry's chest loosen. He isn’t mad that they’ve spent the past month between bookshelves, talking in whispers. 

Harry unwraps his sandwich with shaking fingers, “Yeah, ‘s always—”

“Tommo!” The entire swim team seems to chorus as one. Without asking either Louis or Harry, there are suddenly a group of ten boys trying to squeeze themselves around the table. They jostle and push, seven boys trying to sit on one side of the table while Harry shrinks into Louis’ side, fisting a hand in the back of his sweater. This isn’t happening. He just wanted to sit at this table in the light of the autumn sun and smile at Louis. 

Louis’ hand finds his thigh, “How’re you boys?”

They begin to talk over each other again, scrabbling to answer Louis’ question, but Harry doesn’t hear them. He can’t. His mind is caught skipping on the thumb moving back and forth across his knee, back and forth, comforting and private and  _ theirs.  _ The boys keep talking too loudly: they are all the same kind of tall, lanky, shaggy haired and bright eyed, eager hands and bony fingers. Harry focuses on Louis’ thumb and eats his sandwich, trying not to flush from how easy Louis’ affection feels. Underneath the senseless, ceaseless talking, Harry feels like he’s watching people talk to his dad: the same kind of insincere flattery that is meant to get them somewhere. It makes his chest snarl that people speak to Louis like that. 

People are still talking over each other loudly when Louis leans over to his ear. He's careful, pushes aside Harry's hair with a single hand before whispering, “You’re doing so well.” 

Something rises in Harry, something powerful and warm. He shivers. 

“Where’ve you been, man?” A boy with messy brown hair asks, “We’ve been looking for you at lunch, and you’ve been gone.” 

Louis leans forward, “Eating in the library with Harry” 

One of the boys is trying to whisper and failing, because Harry hears, clearly, “Isn’t he a fag?” 

Harry's entire chest begins to ache sharply, a pinpoint of pain against the silence at their table. He can feel himself going red with an unpleasant, uncomfortable blush. His entire body is tense. 

“Kindly shut the fuck up,” Louis’ voice is more even than Harry has ever heard it, “or I’ll shut you the fuck up, and it will not be kind.” 

Louis keeps saying things, but Harry has gone into a tailspin. He never should’ve agreed to this. If Louis couldn’t stop the rumors, then there’s no one who can, there’s no one who can protect him. Heartbeat drumming in his ears, Harry begins fumbling at his lunch, eyes blurry, hands trembling, just trying to stand up and get out, when a tan pair of hands cradle his. Even with all of their eyes on him, Louis is tender. Harry can feel himself making room for the ache of someone touching him like that. 

“We can go, okay?” 

Harry can only nod numbly. He's not entirely sure he can move himself from this bench or out of this cafeteria, and what about the rest of the school day? Worn and sad, Harry allows Louis to wrap an arm around his waist and get them out of the lunchroom. They stumble to the parking lot while Harry stays paralyzed in his own dizzy mind. His feet are moving, his hand is in Louis’, but he can’t process what’s just happened. It doesn’t seem possible. 

Entire heart tender as a bruise in his chest, Harry spends the ride back to Louis’ house in silence. 

* * *

When Harry wakes up in Louis’ bed, the world is just beginning to darken outside of his bedroom windows. It is his first time in Louis’ space: his bed, the worn shoes in a messy pile near the door, the sweatshirt hanging over the back of his desk chair, the glowing blue of the Xbox lying on the floor under Louis’ TV. It is almost exactly the way that Harry imagined it would be. For a long moment, Harry just blinks and swipes lazily at the spit that has dampened his cheek. It is strange, seeing someone’s room for the first time without them in it. The intimacy of it sets Harry to blushing, even as he scrubs a hand over his tired eyes. They’ve been friends, maybe good friends even, for over a month now. There’s no reason that Harry should be surprised to find himself in Louis’ space. 

In his exhausted haze, Harry sits up in the bed and pushes thoughts of the afternoon out of his head. That doesn’t matter right now. It’s not as if Harry can do anything about it from this bedroom. 

Quietly, voice tremulous, Harry calls, “Lou?” 

No one answers. 

Heart beginning to beat a bit faster in his chest, Harry tries to work up the bravery to say, louder, “Lou?” 

“Harry,” Louis nearly falls through the door with his shoes in his hand. He’s rosy cheeked and, if Harry isn’t mistaken, the bottoms of his sweatpants are wet. October means that all of the docks are in, the boats are stored, the lake is colder than usual. So sleepy, Harry doesn’t remember whether or not Louis had any reason to be in the lake. 

“Were you outside?” 

Louis smiles in the almost purple of the light shining through his window, “Yeah. A neighbor needed some help with their boat.” 

The way he says it, the easy way he grins at Harry, leaves Harry smiling back, dumbstruck that this boy is spending time with him, “Will you take me home now?” 

Louis nods. 

It might be Harry’s imagination, but he feels sand grit when he walks across the room to his shoes. 

* * *

Harry fights down the nausea that rises in his throat when he enters the school, the fruit clutched in his hands giving under the pressure. He couldn’t stomach breakfast this morning. Any wrong step will bring more unwanted attention. Throwing up in the entryway would make coming back here nearly impossible, if yesterday didn’t already do the job. Framed against the sun glaring through the glass doorway, Harry can do nothing but square his shoulders and begin the long walk to his locker. 

Even with the words from yesterday rattling calamitously in his head, the halls are loud with the hushed whispers of people who turn away as soon as Harry walks by, faking busy to avoid his tired gaze. Harry pretends these looks are the same as all of the other ones. People are curious, his dad has always said, they want to know how we live. Thumb worrying at the phone lying silent in his pocket, Harry wonders where Louis will be this morning. Will he want to be seen with Harry anymore? Will he forgive Harry for his silence yesterday? 

Harry’s locker is at the end of a row. Navigating the maze of students who spend the few precious moments they have before school in the locker bay is hard on the best of days. Today, when Harry feels raw, the students are careful not to touch him, like they sense his scorched skin under his purple sweater. That makes it worse. Being ignored feels altogether more awful than the purposeful jostles and the quiet snickers. His hands shake when he goes to grab for his combination lock. 

“Harry,” slim tan fingers stop him against his locker, “Let me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers, “I’m sorry, I should’ve—”

“Harry.” Louis is careful but insistent when he begins to tug the fruit out of Harry’s too tight grasp. 

Harry still feels like he’s on the verge of tears. 

Standing in the middle of the locker bay, fruit from Harry’s hands suddenly in his, Louis begins to juggle. Harry stops entirely. At first, he can do nothing but stare in disbelief; Louis keeps juggling as effortlessly as ever, his lips turned up faintly in the corners. Harry’s mind feels blank with how ridiculous this is. He’d walked in this morning terrified about being the center of attention, and Louis is  _ juggling  _ in the middle of the locker bay. Cheeks reddening under the attention of a suddenly much quieter locker bay, Harry snorts. It is an ungraceful laugh, a private laugh, the kind of giggle that Harry tries his hardest to quash in public. 

Louis’ eyes crinkle with the force of his grin. 

Standing in the middle of the locker bay, Harry begins to laugh. 

* * *

At home, Harry falls asleep and dreams of the ocean. No matter where he falls asleep, no matter what he is thinking about before bed, that fall semester, Harry is always taken back to the same place with the same person. In Harry’s dreams, Louis is always close enough to touch and smell. His smiles, tossed over his shoulder, strawberry lips and the blinding white of his canine teeth, always make something ferocious and fond curl in Harry’s chest. Protection doesn’t feel strong enough to describe the feeling, and happiness is too imprecise. In these dreams, something hums between them, something with its own heartbeat. 

Harry does not reach out to touch in these dreams. They feel like gossamer between his fingers: if he looks too hard, all of the world in his mind will vanish. The sea, the sand, the buildings rising out of the earth, white with sun bleach, and the frantic pounding of his own heart as he watches Louis. 

In his dreams, Louis always waits until they are safely within a passageway. Blue eyes flash at Harry below Louis’ brown hair, and then Harry is against a wall, somehow. The how is never as important as the why. In his dreams, Harry is traced and measured by Louis’s palms against him. His thighs, his hips, his arms, his neck, his cheeks; all of these places are wondered over by Louis, all of these places are worshipped before Louis finally leans into the part of Harry’s panting mouth.Under this scrutiny, Harry touches the nape of Louis’ sweaty neck and sifts feathery hair through his fingers, anticipation coursing through him like a live wire for the moment when they finally, finally kiss. 

Harry does not feel shame or trepidation when Louis’ lips touch his for the first time. If anything, the vice around his heart loosens for the wet heat of Louis’ mouth and the hand that Louis possessively slides down Harry’s side. They are in barely any clothing as it is, simple white tunics against the oppressive heat, and Harry gets hard, embarrassingly quickly, with Louis biting at his lower lip and smiling when they part. He closes his eyes against the sweet tingling in his stomach, arches up into Louis like he can ask questions with only his body. There are no answers in the dream: only Louis’ touch trailing light over his shoulders and out to the tips of his fingers. 

* * *

It is dark when Louis whispers, “I want to show you something.” 

Harry is torn between the urge to knuckle sleepily at his eyes and the urge to hold Louis’ strong hand with both of his as they make their way down the shifting sand to the edge of the water. It is Friday, and everything is silver. His dad is out of town, Gemma is with her boyfriend, and Harry finds himself here, trailing a golden boy down this sloping path to the edge of the lake he’s lived on since he was young. Trees cast long, many-armed reflections across the glassy surface of the lake, and Harry makes himself small to fit more neatly against Louis’ side as he toes at the soggy sand. Even though Harry knows this place, he’s heard that people have seen a woman in the water, and his heart thumps painfully at the thought. He’s not sure how he feels about ghosts. The possibility is enough to leave him anxious. 

“D’you trust me?” Louis whispers into the crown of his head. 

Sleep soft, Harry nods against Louis’ shoulder. He isn’t sure where this is leading. Harry has never really had friends outside of school or spent time with a boy that he was interested in at night, but the sand is malleable against his toes and the moon is silver, and Louis would never hurt him. Louis’ warmth leaves his side only as long as it takes him to settle into place behind Harry. 

Those same soothing hands settle against Harry’s hips, “Ready?” 

“Yeah,” Harry could blame the nonexistent cool wind for the way he shivers or the barely there water lapping at his toes. 

The sweet, constant press of Louis against his back gently propels Harry forward into the warm water. Harry feels like he has wanted Louis forever, at this point. It is impossible to remember a time before he felt this way about Louis, before he orbited Louis. In the darkness, it feels okay to close his eyes and lean his head back into the cradle of Louis’ body. No one but the moon will know. 

“Open your eyes, H.” 

Harry opens his eyes to silver and gold. The water surrounding his calves is silver but, around him and behind him, a faint golden glow illuminates Louis’ skin. Pieces begin falling into place: the night Louis tracked sand grit back into his bed but told Harry to go back to sleep, his fearlessness, his mom only visiting at night. Harry breathes deeply. He’s waiting for the fear to rock through him, but it’s not happening. Instead, he’s holding on more tightly to Louis’ hands, just to feel the faint warmth they give off. Behind him, Louis is relaxing slightly into his back, nuzzling up into the space beneath his hair. 

“What d’you think?” Louis’ voice quavers. 

Judging by the darkness of the sky and the stillness of the city around them, Harry guesses it’s about three in the morning. They don’t have school tomorrow, and they can sleep in. Still, Harry whispers, “I’m sleepy.” 

Louis’ relieved laugh punches out of him quietly, “Haz.” 

Harry closes his eyes again, “Is this why you’re always so warm?” 

“You’re not afraid?” 

If Harry weren’t listening for it, he would’ve thought the waves were whispering against the sandy shore. Silently, he considers. In more ways than one, Louis has saved his life: from his dad, from himself, from the sad hole in his chest where his mom’s memory lives. He doesn’t think he could ever be afraid of Louis. 

“No,” without loosening his grip on Louis’ hands, Harry squeezes, “don’t think I ever could be.” 

The sound of the waves crashing against the shore mixes with Louis’ laughter. 

* * *

“I’m not afraid,” Harry mostly says the words to test their truthfulness. When his voice doesn’t shake, Harry repeats, stronger, “I’m not.” 

Louis smiles. His eyes don’t leave Harry’s face, Harry’s set mouth, as he says, “No, you’re never afraid.” 

The words send a jolt through Harry. He is always scared: of what other people think, of how he feels, of not expressing himself right, of offending other people. There is something unspeakable in Harry’s chest that resonates to the exact tenor as what Louis said. It is too big to hold and too big to see from all sides. Harry can only let it rest beside his heart and wait for the day when it shows its face. 

Exhaling on a yawn that cracks his jaw, Harry looks out at the sun burning up the horizon as it tries to rise above the lake, “You’re golden.” Last night comes back to Harry in waves and temperatures. The cold forest, the cold water, the warm glow of Louis’ body behind him, the burning places where Louis held his hips, “In the water.” He is tired, almost delirious with it, but this conversation feels more important than the sleepy weight of his eyes. 

Louis presses his toes to Harry’s ankle, “My mom lives in the lake.” 

“ _ On  _ the lake?” 

Sharp canine teeth flash in a smile before Louis raises a hand to cover his mouth. He is holding his chin, as if testing its strength, when he says, “What d’you know about Homer?” 

Harry shrugs, his eyes stuck on Louis’ hand. 

“Greek mythology, basically,” Louis licks his lips once before he casts a brief, disbelieving glance at the ceiling, “There were gods, and my mom, Thetis, she…” Louis breathes out, “She was prophesied to give birth to me, and she did.” 

The words stick in Harry’s mind.  _ Prophesied  _ feels monumental, unmoveable, like even if there was a way out, it would be blocked. While Louis watches him with squinted eyes, Harry closes his eyes. Scepticism does not exist. Concern wars with the desire to find out what Louis is actually talking about. Reopening his eyes, Harry smiles, reaching down to touch at the jut of Louis’ sharp ankle bone. 

“She had you,” Harry says, to prompt Louis into continuing his story.

Louis shakes his head, smiling, “Yeah, she had me, and she doesn’t like to leave me.” 

“Where does she live?” 

“In the lake,” a moment passes in silence while Louis tries to find the words, “She’s not human, Harry.” 

The sequence connects in Harry’s head easily. She isn’t human, and neither is Louis. That explains the glowing in the water. This knowledge wars with the tangible reality of Louis, though. As far as Harry can tell, besides the lake, Louis is human: he feels human under Harry’s finger, he sleeps like a human, he chews on the ends of his pencils like a human, he eats lunch in the loud cafeteria like a human.

Harry can feel his forehead furrow as he asks, “She’s not human?” 

“She’s a nymph,” Louis corrects, a hand touching Harry’s knee, “Which makes me half human.”

“But your dad is--” 

Something unfathomable passes over Louis’ face. The dark look is gone before Harry can ask about it. Louis nods, once. 

Harry has at least a thousand questions crowding to the front of his mind. What had that look meant? How does a nymph make a home? At the bottom of the lake? What is it like to still have a mother to guide you? Do you ever wish your family was normal? Without thinking, Harry brings his pointer finger up to his mouth, biting down on the knuckle as he thinks. It could be the sleep or it could be what Louis is saying, but Harry feels like he would benefit from a couple of moments of silence to sort through the mess in his head. 

“You don’t have to believe me,” Louis whispers, picking at one of the darker blue threads woven into the white quilt on his bed, “but it is the truth.”

Harry remembers the water around them, golden and buzzing with the energy of Louis’ skin, “I do believe you.” 

The sun finally succeeds in breaking over the horizon of the lake at the same time that Louis smiles at him, dazzling and full. 

* * *

Harry dreams of running. 

Beneath the metal armor that Harry is wearing, the sun is an almost unbearable second weight on his shoulders. He can hardly breathe for the feeling in his chest, the feeling that rises in his throat. The sound of his feet mixes with the sound of whoever is behind him, panting and clanking, the phantom at Harry’s back. He can’t think with all of the noise and the glare and the unbearably empty field they are in. 

It’s like this: sometimes, the story ends the wrong way because you’re fighting so hard to change it. It’s like this: Harry knows, in every piece of himself, that he shouldn’t have stolen Louis’ armor, that he shouldn’t be on this field with Hector. It’s like this: the way that Louis smiles at him across their darkened tent, the points of his canine teeth in the meat of Harry’s inner thigh, the sunlight behind Louis’ head as he bends down to kiss Harry before he goes to talk to the war council. It’s like this: they are lucky to be born as two pieces of a whole. It’s like this: Harry is so tired of running. It’s like this: the sun’s glare scorches his eyes. 

It’s like this: a roar of “Patroclus!” and the feeling of a sword breaching the gap in his armor, the place where his neck and shoulder meets. 

It’s like this: Harry comes awake gasping, a hand on his throat to check for the frantic pulsing of his heart. 

* * *

When Harry visits the cemetery, he pulls a hat on over his curls and wears ragged jeans with rips in the knees. His mom wouldn’t care what he was wearing, but his dad’s lips, pressed into a thin line, tell him all that he needs to know. Gemma used to go with him, before she got out, before she began to party so often that Harry doesn’t know whether or not she’s been home in the last couple of days. It doesn’t matter what they do so long as it’s discrete. 

The cemetery is the only quiet place that Harry can go. Everywhere else, he’s the youngest member of the Styles dynasty, the final link in a chain of unhappiness that stretches back generations. His mom, her unassuming headstone, the plot of green grass that she rests under and the huge, ancient oak tree shading her, all make Harry feel like he can breathe. There is something freeing about meandering up, over the hill, and to the place where she is lying, the entirety of Lake Superior reaching into the distance like a link between them. As Harry walks into the shade under her tree, he pulls the blue hoodie he’s wearing tighter around himself. 

He never sits against the tree. She used to love lying down beside him in the sand, her wet, dark hair fanned out around her, her hands buried, her head turned to watch him squirm tirelessly, young and too energetic. He remembers his mom as a quiet woman, as the person she was before she spent days sitting at the kitchen table sifting through medicine. 

“Mom,” Harry whispers as he stretches out along the length of her grave. His entire front is warmed by the ground, his head pillowed on his hands, “I've missed you.” 

There is no easy way to talk about death. Age and distance don’t seem to matter much. Nothing has ever hardened the place in his chest where his mom has curled, close and warm and safe. When people ask him about it, he knows that he’s supposed to respond good-naturedly. That’s part of the deal. This, these quiet moments where he lies out and listens to the rustling of the lake with his mom, are his reprieve from that. 

There are worlds where things work out differently, where his mom is still lying on the beach with a seashell in one hand and Harry's hand in her other one. This is not that world. He has taken years to get to a place where he can think that without feeling a hole open in his chest. 

“Harry,” comes, quietly, from behind him. 

Harry opens his eyes to watch Louis sink onto the grass beside his hip. Even in the evening, even when it’s almost fall, Louis looks like he climbed right out of summer’s heart. His dark jeans and sweatshirt make Harry feel safer. They’re both here, outside of their normal lives, to be with his mom, and Louis understands. Harry’s known him for nearly a year, and he’s never seen louis’ mom. Being a family is hard. 

It’s been nearly a month since Harry spent any time with his mom. Time slips away, like water through a sieve, and school and campaigning and pretending whittle down what little time is left. His gentle-eyed, soft-hearted mom shouldn’t suffer for that. Harry still feels a guilty stone in the pit of his stomach, and he closes his eyes against the knowledge of his own failure as a son. He should be better to her. He should be better than his father. 

“I don't spend enough time with her,” Harry murmurs into the basket of his arms. It is one of his greatest fears: losing the memories he has of his mom to the way his father saw her, to the way that he treated her, “It’s like… I'm losing pieces of my memories of her. I don’t remember, like—” 

Louis’ voice sounds like it’s coming from a long way away, even though Harry can feel the warmth of his knee against his hip, “What d’you mean?” 

“When I was thirteen, my father was having this huge fundraiser. Y’know,” Harry has to stop and clear the grit out of his throat. He’s never told anyone about this before, “he spent so long making sure that gems and I looked  _ presentable, _ like—like we were props or something.” 

Beside him, Louis’ breathing is even.

“We were walking out of our rooms, y’know, getting ready to go to the party or whatever, and he just—” Harry’s breath hitches when he remembers the worn, dejected way his mom had looked at them, the way the door had sounded clicking locked from the outside, “he just locked her in their bedroom.” 

“What?” 

“He didn’t want her to ruin his chances.” Looking back on things now makes his father’s behavior more deplorable. He can’t imagine abandoning the person he loves to suffer alone, to suffer in locked rooms and empty kitchens. Harry remembers sneaking back upstairs to jiggle the door handle and sitting on the landing, crying, until someone came to help him get in to see his mom. He remembers the article in the paper that had caused the locked door, the pictures of his mom trying to leave the hospital undetected. “She was always so sad,” Harry murmurs.

Louis’ voice comes out harder than before, “Did you tell anyone about this?” 

Harry was young and terrified. His eyes blur with tears as he shakes his head. 

A small hand finds its way into the center of Harry's back. Against the sadness in his chest, Louis is a grounding strength against his side. He rubs in circles, soothing and rhythmic and comforting. Harry sniffles loudly; he’d thought that telling someone would make him feel better, would make the weight in his chest less, but he feels like an idiot for not realizing that his father was doing something incredibly wrong right under their noses. It explains so many of the things that Gemma has done, and it explains so many of the ways that Harry has been taught to think of his mom. 

When Louis speaks, his voice is infinitely softer, “Harry.” 

Sniffling, Harry wipes uselessly at the hair that has fallen into his face and gotten wet. His curls are stuck to his face, and he’s trembling too hard to be of much use before another, less shaky, hand joins his. Louis is so, so careful: he moves Harry's hair back behind his ear before settling a thumb against Harry's cheekbone. 

Louis rubs back and forth, back and forth, across the reddened skin under his eyes, “I’m so sorry you had to see that.” 

Instead of responding, Harry curls around Louis’ legs. He’s spent months trying to find a place where he could just be sad about his mom without the awful weight of his father’s disappointment. Resting in the shade of his mom’s tree, Lake Superior sending the smell of water into the air, Harry closes his eyes and lets Louis’ stare warm his cheeks. Silence feels a little bit like healing. 

“She’d be proud of you.” 

Wherever his mom is, Harry is sure that she is watching him and Gemma muddle through this year. They’ve both done piss poor jobs at keeping it together. Gemma spends all of her time as far away from their house as she can. Harry has spent a year hiding in the library to escape the people who laugh at him for his dead mom, for his sexuality. 

Mouth against the grass, Harry scoffs, “What’s there to be proud of?” 

“You.” 

* * *

Harry is walking by the lake as the sun sets. His mind feels like it is running eight thousand miles an hour. He consciously, knowingly makes himself walk more slowly. Focusing on his feet and his legs, then his abdomen and his clenched shoulders forces Harry to check in with himself in a way that he hasn’t in a long time. The green smell on the air and the jagged edge of the wind cut through a lot of the fog in Harry’s tired mind. Between Louis and his dad, his dreams, and the end of the quarter coming up, Harry does not know when he will next catch a break. His phone, sitting on his nightstand at home, has probably not ceased vibrating, if it hasn’t already fallen off of the furniture entirely. Harry does not care. This may be his only chance this week, homecoming week, to take a deep breath. 

The sky goes purple and orange, the colors of an autumn sunset, and Harry sinks into the sand, cold feet and colder sand, to watch the water and sky melt into one. His mind is pleasantly blank. That is the precise moment that he feels someone’s eyes on him. 

Harry’s first reaction is to sit up straighter. His aching lower back protests as he turns first one way and then the other, checking over his shoulders. There is no one there. Something like anxiety simmering near the top of his stomach, Harry whips back around the water. No one is there either. Trying to shake the weird feeling off, Harry stands up, brushing the sand from the seat of his pants. His quiet has been ruined. He doesn’t feel safe here anymore. 

“You are mortal,” someone says, voice thundering in like the tide breaking against craggy rocks.

Harry closes his eyes against the sudden light of a goddess’ appearance and his sudden, bottomless fear. She is speaking to him. In the void behind his eyes, he imagines himself calmer, standing tall in the strong current and refusing to be tugged out to the middle of the lake on the tail of Thetis’ anger. He wanted to meet her. Harry opens his eyes.

Praying for his voice to remain even, Harry says, “I am.”

Nothing compares to being stared down by Thetis: not the calm calculation of his father’s anger,

not the open, wondering way Louis has of looking at him. Thetis has a way of looking that is not

human: unblinking and fierce. Harry begins to feel ridiculous. His stringy curls are dangling

piecemeal against his neck and forehead, making him shiver, as he waits for a sea goddess’

approval. He should not be here.

“Gods do not stay for mortals.”

Thetis’ voice sends the tide rushing in against Harry’s legs. Refusing to let the current take him

out into the middle of the cold lake, Harry stands in the shallows and breathes through the

pinpricks of pain that flare along his ankles. Harry is too young to vote and drink, but he knows

the constancy of Louis’ love. He has not been waiting to be kissed for nothing. Thetis intimidates

him when he’s in the water. Harry chants, quietly, in the back of his mind:  _ she has no power on _

_ dry land, she has no power. _

“He will not stay for you.”

Harry has had years of practice in holding his tongue when he knows there is no point, but he is not quite fast enough to school his expression. She can see the moment that tears bead and fall down his cheeks and the defiant way that Harry dashes them before he turns his back on her and walks back to his home. She will not win, he vows fiercely. 

* * *

Later the next night, Harry has been staring into the fire for so long that his entire vision is glazed over. The wood is beginning to sputter: flames turning to embers, orange logs giving away to blackened char, the cup in Harry’s hand sweating condensation against his jeans. He doesn’t look away from Niall’s imperious poking at the fire with a bigger stick. Eventually, it will catch fire again. It always does. 

In the darkness, the voices of his classmates rise from bodiless apparitions somewhere down the beach. He couldn’t pinpoint any of them, even if he tried. Harry isn’t sure if he cares to know where any of them are at the moment. There’s only one person, somewhere in the dark, that Harry wants to see, and he’d insisted that they come separately. 

The fire has begun to burn in earnest when Louis reappears from the woods. Harry looks between the cup against his jeans and Louis, watching for signs that something has irrevocably changed between himself and Louis since he angered Thetis. He is good at reading nearly imperceptible signs. Louis does not look like he is changed -- he greets the swim team boys with his usual grin, grabbing a water before he sees Harry staring and smiles. Harry can only meet his gaze for a moment before he is ducking his head, hiding the fear and the sadness in his eyes. His heart feels heavy in his chest. Louis, faintly luminous in his too big maroon sweatshirt, settles onto Harry’s log without looking at him. 

“Gonna drink that?” Louis nudges at the solo cup Harry is clenching in his hand. 

When the heat of Louis’ arm brushes past Harry’s leg, Harry thinks of his dreams. The sea, the sand, and always Louis’ hands. He thinks of the tender place in his heart, the too big place that he has already reserved for Louis. The weight of futility has been settling more and more heavily against Harry’s bones lately. Thetis will not fold. Harry has no idea how to even begin to get her to fold. Now, finally, the knowledge of their situation settles on Harry: there is no version of this story where they win. It won’t matter what happened in the darkness. 

Louis’ eyes shine like gold coins in the light when he looks at Harry, “What?” 

“Thetis said that you would never choose me,” Harry whispers to the fire. 

With the waves rustling along the shore and the crackling of the fire, it is almost impossible to make out the low sound of what Louis says. Muffled as it is against the rim of his cup, Harry still startles when he hears it, still turns too quickly to watch Louis’ facial expressions. He is looking at Harry with sharp, narrowed blue eyes, his teeth sunk into his lower lip. 

Louis settles his cup against his thigh, “She what?” 

Harry curls his nails more tightly against the wood of the log when he senses the challenge in Louis’ tone, “She said you wouldn’t choose me?” 

“She’s a fucking liar,” even with all of the background noise, Harry doesn’t think he’s imagining the way that Louis’ voice has hardened or the way he straightens up a little bit. With his shoulders drawn back and the fire-glow gold on his skin, he looks like a god. 

Harry is stunned speechless for a moment before he finds the words to say, “She said--”

“I’m right here,” Louis cuts across him, his voice strong, “And I don’t give a  _ damn  _ what Thetis says.” 

“You what?” Harry feels overly conscious of the waves at his back, as if Thetis is standing on the shore and watching them. It feels like the sky could open at any moment. 

Louis’ warm touch against his cheek jolts Harry, “Why wouldn’t I want to be with you?” 

The words don’t register immediately. It’s been nearly a year of Harry feeling like he might melt into Louis, like he might fight tooth and nail for Louis’ heart and still lose. His first reaction is to laugh. There is no way that a demigod, someone who could have anyone, has chosen him. 

“Me?” Harry's fingers hurt as he works to straighten them against the pain of clenching onto the log for so long. 

Louis nods, “You.” 

Even with the warm looseness of long-gone beer tingling through his veins, Harry feels the echo of that day at the cemetery. The reminder of Louis there, supporting him through something difficult, nearly chokes him. He wants this so badly. Feels like he could burn up in the fire if Louis keeps looking at him, unwavering and soft. 

“I’m terrified,” Harry’s voice falters, “I’m scared all the time, and I don’t have many friends, and my life is--” 

Harry is silenced by the warm, sure weight of Louis’ mouth at the edge of his lips. His nervous exhale is combined with Louis’ laugh, with the calming hand that Louis puts over Harry’s cheek, “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” 

Stiff, unsure of where to put his hands, Harry whispers, “Will you tell me again?” Harry’s clumsy hands fit neatly to the nape of Louis’ soft neck and the scruff of his feathery hair. It is a revelation, Harry thinks, to touch the real thing. As new as it feels, Harry has a single moment of deja vu: he has done this before with Louis, has touched him in a firelight. 

“You,” Louis touches their lips together, a feather-light kiss, “are so beautiful.” 

In the glow of the fire, in the glow of Louis’ luminous eyes, Harry is kissed until he believes what Louis is saying. 

* * *

Harry dreams of Louis’ lips and Louis’ hands and Louis’ teeth on his inner thigh. A voice, like time herself has come to speak to them, whispering, “There hasn’t been a single moment when I haven’t loved you.” 

* * *

The next morning, Harry wakes up with a warm, muzzy feeling on his lips and chin. Last night feels like one of Harry’s too real dreams: the firelight, the weight of Louis’ mouth, the smile that Louis hid in his shoulder as they walked back home together, hand in hand. Impossibility wars with Harry’s knowledge of reality. Something this good, something this bright, usually passes him by. He is touching his lips with the tips of his fingers as he checks his phone. Louis hasn’t texted yet. He must still be sleeping. Smiling, feeling the heat of his lips, Harry rolls out of bed and tugs on a pair of sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt. 

Harry goes about beginning his day without worrying too much about Louis’ silence. Happiness burbles in his chest as he wanders around the quiet house, making breakfast, letting tea seep in a mug while he finds his history textbook and the notes that he’s supposed to finish, tucked in the page that he was stuck at. Absent-mindedly, still thinking about the kisses, Harry sends a “good morning” text to Louis. He’ll respond when he wakes up, surely. Harry’s humming as he sets his phone on the table and gets back to making his breakfast. Thetis and the lake seem very far away. When he’s dressed his toast and added some milk to his tea, Harry settles down at the kitchen table to do his work. 

It is nearly noon before Harry looks at his phone again. The screen is blank. Heart plummeting, Harry pulls up the threads of texts between himself and Louis. The message has been delivered. Not read. Something powerfully hurt rises in Harry’s chest: he can feel bile in the back of his throat and embarrassment, like an illness, curdling in his stomach. Last night meant a lot to him. Harry knows that he’s not the greatest at reading people, but Louis had been sincere, he thinks. You don’t touch someone like that if you don’t mean it. Louis, the person who met his mom, the person who saved him in the library, surely wouldn’t turn around and lie to him now, would he? 

Harry is rising from the table before he has consciously made the decision. His tennis shoes, coated in sand, rest near the door, and his jacket, the one with the furred hood, hangs on the hooks right beside his keys. Harry has only been to Louis’ house a couple of times, but he knows that he can find it. Blindfolded, arms tied behind his back, Harry could find his way there, could find his way to Louis. The fall air bites at his cheeks and the exposed parts of his ankles as he climbs into the old truck parked in the side garage. Harry drives to Louis’ house in silence, letting the feeling in his stomach take shape into something darker and more sinister. Maybe Louis had been proving to the swim team that he could con Harry into something like this? Harry’s eyes are fogged with tears when he pulls into the driveway of Louis’ house. 

Harry crosses the driveway while he scrubs, angrily, at the tears on his cheeks. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this. By the time he knocks on the door, Harry’s sadness has sharpened, grown jagged edges. This beautiful, overly large white house, and Harry could burn it to the ground in a second. 

The man who answers the door is undoubtedly Louis’ dad: his piercing blue eyes, his tan skin, the soft hair that he has knotted back into a ponytail, all of it is copied on Louis’ face, even the jut of his cheekbones, defiant and strong. Harry was ready to be mad, ready to scream and shout. Seeing this man, so clearly a copy of his son, takes the air out of Harry’s sails. He just wants to be kissed. 

“He’s not here,” the man’s voice is deeper than Harry’s own voice. His blue eyes look past Harry, at the lake, “I don’t know where he is.”    
  


Harry’s voice breaks, “Could I leave him a message?” 

The man shakes his head, curt, “He will not receive it.” 

“What?” Harry feels silly and young, tears leaking out of his eyes as he stares at someone older than him who surely thinks that he’s just a heartsick child, “Can I just-- I want to see him.” 

Sharp, blue eyes appraise Harry for a long moment. When the man speaks, his voice blends with the scratching of leaves across the pavement and the heavy, betrayed feeling in Harry’s chest and stomach, “You cannot see him. He has gone.” 

“Where?” Harry raises his hands to cover his face, every single past betrayal surging in his chest, “Where is he?” 

The man’s eyes soften for a split second before he closes the door in Harry’s face. 

Left on the front step, Harry crumples. He simply folds: head down, arms around his knees, back against the front door as he cries. Louis was supposed to be different. Harry was sure of him, sure of the feelings that crackled between them, sure of his ridiculous dreams. Now, as the wind picks up, as the whitecaps on the lake surge, Harry cries and cries, not caring who sees or who judges him. His heart is a tender bruise in his chest. 

A sudden, unexplainable clap of thunder jars Harry out of his sobbing. Surprised, his swollen eyes take in the darkening sky and the fat drops of rain that patter against the leaves. Harry needs to go home before this storm worsens. He can’t be caught out, driving in a downpour. He is rising from the step, wiping at his eyes with his hands, when he sees the envelope that’s been slid beneath the door. 

Written on it, in simple cursive, is the message:  _ there are no bargains between lions and men.  _ Inside, Harry finds a plane ticket. 

  
  



	2. Silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two.

Harry does not expect the act of leaving to be as easy as it is. Beside Louis, staring out the front of an old Chevy, he feels improbably free. They are racing toward something unknown, but Harry has never felt less afraid of his future. He can almost feel the past few years, the impossible weight of his life, slipping off his shoulders as they drive further into places that Harry has never been before. Louis sits beside him, calm hands on the truck’s wheel, his entire body humming with something that Harry can recognize but is unable to describe. A golden boy fading to ochre as the sun sets. A nearly silent voice humming along to a song that Harry remembers distantly. Harry watches Louis’ profile through half-lidded eyes and doesn’t worry about running from his family. 

The constant, comforting  _ I know him I know him from a dream I know him from somewhere my body knows him  _ builds and breaks in Harry’s chest as they move through the winding roads further into a place that Harry has never seen and couldn’t describe, even if pressed. It’s foolish, but Harry trusts his lasting impressions from that dream of sharp teeth set into his jaw line, set into the skin of his inner thigh, and the quiet, high voice whispering, “ _ There hasn’t been a single moment when I haven’t loved you.”  _

The trees have begun to crowd closer together when Harry finally allows himself to relax in the front seat of the truck. Hills lull him to sleep, the rasp of Louis’ nearly silent singing drifts through the truck’s cab, and Harry is curled up in his seat, curled up in the heat of his heart. His dreams feel dark and liquid, sifting through his fingers faster than he can grab them up. He has brief impressions of herbs between his fingers, brief impressions of the way that Louis’ shoulders feel under his hands. Sun burnishes leaves, and Louis is in a lake, in a river, smiling at him, holding him, saying, “ _ Philitatos _ .” 

When the truck finally slows, Harry is reminded of all of the times that he has driven home, the way tires sound on the streets of a place that he knows. It is instinctual to lift his head up and blearily eye the building looming ahead. Harry half expects to be back home. Instead, he can just barely make out the golden glow of a cabin nestled between trees and mountains, the faint scent of something wild in the air. Night makes shadows crawl across Louis’ face, makes Louis seem impossibly sharp when he looks at Harry. Somehow, the woods around them are quiet. 

“Hey, sleepy boy,” Louis’ touch is gentle when he traces down the side of Harry’s face, touches the indents from where Harry slept on his sweater, “Ready?” 

Harry does not know what he is agreeing to, and he can’t quite remember his dreams, but he feels their residual warmth, the ease with which he got on that plane and ended up here. He nods. 

They stumble out of the truck without any more discussion. While Louis slings both of their backpacks over his shoulders, Harry stands beside the car, knuckling sleep from his gritty eyes. Harry can feel the heat from the engine at his back. He can feel the warmth of Louis’ side against his front. He is somehow not unsure. Whatever this is, it cannot be any worse than what they have come from. They are damaged already. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the thing that makes them whole. There is a too tall man standing in the doorway, blocking the light with his shoulders, but Harry is not afraid. Harry remembers all the times he went home, worried about what his mom would be like, worried about what his dad would have done to his mom. They walk towards whoever is waiting for them in the doorway, and Harry feels himself take a deep breath for the first time in a long time. 

“I’ve been expecting you,” the man in the doorway wears a broad smile and ripped jeans. His face is weathered in a way that manages to be rugged, instead of old. 

Louis stops within the circle of light spilling from the door. Harry, tentative under the watchful eyes of the man standing in the doorway, reaches almost instinctively for the bundle of Louis’ fingers. He does not feel afraid, but he feels, maybe for the first time, that Louis is somehow  _ more _ . This is not a place for mortals. This silent, warm place does not belong on any map, and Harry does not know if he could even describe where they have gone. 

Louis looks almost defiant at Harry’s side. He does not look down or look away from the man’s eyes when he says, “Will you teach me?” 

The man’s face settles into a more serious expression. Harry has not seen him glance down to their hands, but he knows that the man knows, almost like he knows his own name, like he knows that his father will not worry about his absence. “You know why she has sent you here?” 

Harry watches all of the small expressions flit across Louis’ face, “I do.” 

“You know that you will have to choose?” 

Again, Louis responds in a voice that remains firm, “I do.” 

Finally, the man’s piercing brown eyes settle on Harry, “He knows that you will have to choose?” The unwavering gaze does not move from Harry, even as he speaks to Louis. 

For long moments, they stand in silence, everything tense. When Harry begins to feel like he is at risk of falling asleep on the front step, the man in the doorway steps back to allow them inside. Whatever he has seen in Harry’s eyes has apparently settled the conversation. Harry carefully files the man’s question away for later, when he has had more time to think about it. There is too much new tonight to worry about a question that Harry feels ill-equipped to answer. He knows about Louis: the lake water and the glowing and the soft, vulnerable way he’d kissed Harry. Those are the only things that matter. 

The inside of the cabin is somehow bigger than it appeared on the outside. Everything is large and warm, glowing with the orange light from the fire, the scent of wood burning. They are lead, sleepy and safe, to the back of the house. One door at the end of a hallway, one bedroom, two nods goodnight before the man is wandering back to the living room, and the door is shutting as he leaves the house. Harry does not wonder how he will share a bed with Louis. He just crawls gratefully into a bed and pulls the covers up to his chin before falling asleep. 

* * *

In the morning, Harry finds his way out into a dawn that has barely lightened beyond bruised black. He does not know where they are, but the morning has exposed more mountains to his view, craggy and reaching for the wide sky. It is not cold and not warm, so different from the Minnesota mornings where he can feel the cold eating through his layers with sharp teeth and hungry hands. Everything is silent, save for the patter of what sounds like horse’s hooves. For a brief moment, counted between heartbeats, Harry thinks of home. It will be the last time he wonders about his dad for a long time. 

Somehow, against all odds, Harry settles into this life between mountains. Things are easier than they have ever been; the rhythms of wake up, work or play or learn, eat, and sleep come as naturally as the waves against the shore of Lake Superior. Louis is nearly always by his side. Bright and sweet and tanning in the burnished fall sun, he has never looked more carefree. It has always been there in the back of Harry’s constantly running mind. Out here, in the quiet, Harry falls in love with Louis as naturally as the leaves turn from green to reds and oranges.

Harry learns how to throw an axe beside Louis, learns how to notch and fire an arrow at the blazing orb of the sun without flinching. His hands, the same hands that always used to tremble, become sure and strong. The man silently watches Harry at his work. Harry feels himself growing used to the attention. He blossoms. 

When there is snow on the ground, the man asks Harry about his knowledge of herbs and plants. Harry is not sure. He has brief, broken memories of his mother with salves but, beyond that, he has nothing. The man takes Harry to a room at the back of the house. The windows are open wide to the beyond, and the fireplace burns and crackles. The room smells strongly of some indistinct, herbal scent. Harry is not yet able to pick out the smell of sage and rosemary. The smell of a cleansed room. Somehow, inexplicably, he feels no fear. In the warmth of this room, there is no space for anything but curiosity and a strange feeling of homecoming. 

The man begins to show Harry jars and jars of herbs and flowers, dried bulbs hanging from the ceiling in makeshift vines. At first, Harry can only stare wide-eyed. He has been dropped into the middle of the forest, but he is still indoors, enclosed in this room with big windows and stones on the walls. The dried flowers and herbs feel brittle in his hands, but the mortar and pestle is strong: a solid, immovable weight between his hands. Eventually, the man leaves him. In the silence, in the absence of Louis, Harry feels himself expand to fit the borders of this room. He inhales once and knows, deep in the heart of his stomach, in the very base of his sternum, that his mom would love this room. That she is somehow in this room with him. 

The herbs take time to get used to the feel of Harry’s fingers, and he struggles to know how to touch them. His knuckles are nearly always red, those first few weeks. Louis learns to do battle in the afternoons, and Harry retreats to his little room and the bright cold winter and the sharp smell of ground herbs. As his hands grow used to the work, as his knuckles stop smarting, Harry begins to understand. There is a certain way about them, a certain feeling that hums up his fingertips. Harry memorizes the good ones and remembers the bad ones, makes notes in a small, bound brown book that the man leaves on the wooden counter one day. All the while, Harry can feel his mother in the room with him, a shell up to his beating heart. 

The best days are when Harry journeys around their small mountain, searching for the right herbs and flowers. Louis is always out in the waning sun, half an eye on him, the other on the quicksilver moments of the man as he dances around Louis with a sword. Harry’s life feels like a fever dream: the flowers nearly reaching for his fingertips, the surity of Louis’ laughter behind him as he parries a particularly difficult blow, the entire world at their feet. They grew golden and strong in the fall, but they settle and harden in the winter. 

Harry loves the spring best. They are still new to it but they know, then, that the wait and the trials have been worth it. In the morning, they train against each other, giggling and shouting, their arrows notching in the exact moment. Then, lunch, under a tree, throwing food at each other. The afternoons feel endless with choices: Louis in the sun, Louis in the stream, Louis in his room, bashful and asking after which herb does what, his warrior’s hands shaking around Harry’s flowers, the blood red of his mouth when he smiles. In this way, the days melt like ice, sluice through Harry’s hands. The summer feels like love, like the cracking open of a pomegranate to reveal the blushing insides, like divinity is shrouding them from everything, although Harry cannot put a name to any of these things until much later. 

“Look,” Louis whispers in the near dark of Harry’s quiet room, “His sword.” 

Harry does not have an answer for a god’s sword. His herbs pale in comparison to the steady knit of Louis’ skin piecing itself back together. Mesmerized, they both watch in the evening light as Louis’ body fixes itself. Harry does not even feel the running of his heart in his chest as he thinks of all the ways that other gods, people with the same kind of powers as Louis, could hurt each other. He recognizes the message. He hears the man’s voice:  _ gods will eat each other whole.  _

* * *

“What will you have to choose?” 

The spring sunlight barely touches them through the open windows of Harry’s herb room. Still, he feels like someone has cracked open his chest and hollowed it, made a physical space for all of the fear he feels. That night, that almost dream night, when they showed up here, Harry remembers feeling strong and sure, the ghost of Louis’ kiss against his mouth. He doesn’t feel any less sure or strong, but the man’s comment has lingered like an itch. 

Louis does not look up from the pummel stone in his hand. For long, long moments, he is silent. Only the grinding of lavender and the piercing awareness of its scent in the room with Harry’s skittish heart and his angry, restless, reddened hands. 

“I have to choose,” Louis makes eye contact with Harry like a wolf through the trees, “between  _ this  _ and you.” 

Somewhere, pushed deep down, Harry knew it could only be something like that. 

Harry stutters when he says, “ _ This?”  _

Louis wipes his hands on his jeans, “You don’t get to be a hero if you don’t prove yourself. They won’t— like, they don’t take you if you’ve not proven yourself.” 

For a frantic moment, Harry mentally combs through all of the herbs and flowers drying in racks around him or bottled and stored around the outside of the room. He turns slowly, caught in the effort to fix, to somehow mend whatever has been broken by forces beyond him. His knuckles are red, he wants to shout:  _ I would learn to mend the world for you,  _ but the words turn to smoke when he remembers the man’s cut on Louis’ arm and the warning there. 

“When?” 

The moments between when Harry asked and when Louis answers add up to fourteen. Harry wonders if this is the answer, if he could puzzle out these numbers and the answer will appear in thin air above him. The smell of herbs has stopped being soothing; instead, Harry feels caught, trapped, like he’s wading through a cloying stench to get back into his body. 

“When Thetis asks,” Louis shrugs like it doesn’t matter, but he won’t look at Harry. 

Harry’s voice trembles when he tries to say, “She can’t— she can’t do that.” The thought that all of their fighting could’ve been for nothing nearly bowls him over. They did not run to this nowhere land between real and religion for nothing. 

Louis finally fixes his sharp gaze on Harry. There is no judgement in his gaze, despite the fact that Harry knows he’s sounding like a child, asking questions that he does not want an answer to. The days melt and run through his hands, and Louis keeps looking at him so steadily that he could still a whitened river. Harry measures the moments with crushed sage between his anxious hands, a river’s edge dangerously close to muddying the banks. 

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Harry looks across the expanse of plaid sheets between himself and Louis and realizes that he doesn’t know the person lying across from him. Louis is so sharp-boned in the moonlight, and Harry thinks that maybe, in the past, there were times when he could not be with this person in a way that he understood. Louis has thoughts and feelings that he has never told Harry about. Harry has to be okay with that. There is no other way for them to move forward. 

When Louis finally speaks, his voice falters. “You don’t have to stay here, but --” 

Harry’s inhale is loud in the silent room. 

“But you,” here, without moving from across the table, Louis somehow reaches into Harry’s heart and stills its anxious mechanisms, “you’re always welcome where I am.” 

* * *

The feeling catches Harry when he is least expecting it, settling like an ache in his stomach and groin. Harry is looking at Louis practicing archery, watching the gleam of his new golden muscles in the sun, tracing the delicate slope from ear to neck with his eyes, and then he’s floored by it: the  _ want  _ he has been pressing down grows teeth overnight, teeth for this boy Harry has watched grow into a god. He looks away. The memory of Thetis, of Louis’ dad shutting the door with a sigh, linger too strongly. He has been warned against this boy, but his stubborn heart refuses to listen. When Louis is focused on something the man is saying, Harry sneaks off into the woods. 

The trees and the flowers make Harry feel cocooned. He can say what he wants here, and no one will overhear him trying to rationalize his decision to follow a boy he kissed once to the other side of the country. As Harry gently moves a tree branch out of his path while he steps over some flowers, he thinks that he wouldn’t know how to explain it, even after all of the hours spent out here, even after thinking it over so many times that the moment has turned to dust between his hands. He’d only known that wherever Louis was, he needed to be there too. It is not something he has ever been able to articulate, and it’s never been something that he could relate to any of the other things in his life. He’d just  _ known;  _ deep down, from the moment Louis had said, “Why would I be with anyone else when I could be with you?” 

On the plane, safely miles above the ground, Harry spent hours trying to figure out if he knew any other people who could not bear to be apart, if he knew any other people who could possibly come close to feeling what he feels for Louis. The clouds tumbled by outside of the window, the stewardess brought him a glass of water, and Harry wondered about Gemma, about Niall, about all of the people he’d ever seen. Finally, when the plane was beginning to feel oppressive, Harry thought about his mom. He hoped that she knew love so good that she wouldn’t be able to bear even two days without it. He wishes it again as he lies down in the velvet grass near the river’s edge. Harry wishes that his mom was here; that she could spend time walking along the beach with Louis, that she could hold blue sea glass up to his eyes and see how close the colors are. His mom would’ve known what to do with the heaviness in his chest. She would’ve told him that Louis was the right one. They could’ve gotten her out of his father’s house, maybe. Everything would’ve been different with Louis by his side. 

He does not leave. He will not leave. 

* * *

The days pass by without sympathy or strain; without their noticing, the spring turns into a golden summer, ochre light the only sign that the long days begin or end. Harry measures the passing seasons by the brown color of Louis’ ankles and the quiet, heavy way he looks after practice sometimes. Harry has swallowed his want, swallowed his fear, swallowed the way he feels when Louis looks at him across the expanse of dock between them and says, “Your hair is lighter.” 

Harry cannot do anything but blush and ask Louis quietly, in a voice that bends but does not break, “Do you like it?” 

Louis reaches across the empty space to grasp a corkscrew that stubbornly insists on forming near Harry’s temple. Everything goes silent for Louis’ touch. It is not that they have not touched since they kissed, but Harry has tried very hard to not measure himself or his days here by the expansion and contraction of the want in his chest. He is trying to learn, to be the best healer he can be. Harry breathes evenly, in and out, as Louis’ eyes pass over his face and his chest, down to the slight bulge in his swim trunks and his lean legs. Curl grasped gently between his fingers, Louis’ voice only shakes a little when he says, “You--” a tremulous laugh passes through Louis’ lips, “I will always like you.” 

Heart racing in his chest, Harry hides his face by placing his hands over his eyes, helpless and in love. He cannot stop the feeling in his chest. He has been helpless to Louis since the day they met. 

“Harry,” his entire body is set aglow by the gentle way Louis says his name, “H, I adore you.” 

Harry moves his hands from his face hesitantly, not believing what he’s heard. The dock is on rocks with the waves which would usually make Harry feel sick, but he feels frozen in this moment, frozen in his clumsy affection for Louis. Technically, he is twenty now: stronger and smarter, aged in the middle of Colorado while he washed herbal remedies from under his nails and learned how to apply salve to Louis’ fractious scars from training. Watching Louis’ eyes soften, watching his mouth tug up into a sweet smile, makes Harry feel sixteen,“What does that mean?” 

“It means,” Louis’ proximity make the waves froth and foam as they fight to get back to his skin, to the energy always humming near him, “that I would-- if you’ll have me-- I mean, for as long as you’ll have me--” 

“I would’ve had you that very first day,” Harry whispers to him. 

Somehow, the silence carries those words back to Louis. Calm and confident, entire body lit up by the water, Louis rolls over to Harry, to look down at Harry’s blushing face against the dock. This place has become Harry’s bathing area, his washing area, his retreat. Now, with Louis beside him and Thetis thousands of miles away, it feels ridiculous that he didn’t realize the water was leading him to this the entire time. Leading him back to Louis. 

As the sun glows golden behind him, Louis curls their fingers together near Harry’s hip, “I’d like to be with you. For as long as you’ll have me.” 

Harry’s lips twist without his permission, “What about Thetis?” The weight of his own missing mom always sits heavily in his chest. Allowing Louis to pick him without first bringing up Thetis feels like betraying the woman with soft eyes who cradled shells in her palms so Harry could trace them. 

Louis squeezes his hand, “Look at me.” 

The image of his mom spilling pills onto the kitchen table is burned into the back of Harry’s eyes, even when he looks at Louis. 

Louis’ smile is guileless and bright, “She can’t see us, Harry.” 

It has been over a year of Harry not knowing whether or not he could ever have Louis the way he wanted. The sudden relief, the sudden releasing of the tension makes him curl up and against Louis’ shoulder with an audible exhale. His fingers are cutting crescent moons into Louis’ waist, but Louis just laughs breathlessly in his ear, his soothing, smart hands going to Harry’s hips and stomach. 

“I didn’t know,” Harry manages, when the feeling has begun to recede in his throat. He’s not even sure what he’s saying. Half delirious with happiness, Harry presses his lips to Louis’ shoulder, just once, just because he can, “I didn’t know, I--” 

“Ridiculous boy,” strong hands cradle Harry’s face until he is staring up into soft, brilliant blue eyes, “How could you ever doubt that I love you? How could you ever doubt that?” 

Before Harry has time to respond, Louis is pressing their mouths together. Everything in Harry’s body rises powerfully to the warmth of Louis’ arms and the way closeness finally feels when Harry knows that he has permission for it. They lay in the sun on the dock, kissing, until the sun has sunk below the horizon. Harry goes pliant when the kisses move to his neck and shoulders. He could burn up, right between Louis’ hands, and no one would know except for them. 

* * *

Nothing could have prepared Harry for being Louis’. 

Louis kisses across his shoulders as they curl up together before bed, saying nothing, but then Harry is turning over and meeting his mouth, flushed with the ability to finally,  _ finally _ kiss. They kiss open and closed-mouthed, they kiss sloppy and sweet, warm and wet; Harry can do nothing but meet the kisses and touch like he is starving. When he realizes how hard he is, rutting up into the space between him and Louis, he mewls, hiding his face in Louis’ fevered neck to mouth at the skin. 

A small, careful hand strokes down his back as Louis whispers, “I could touch you?” 

Harry aches to be touched by Louis. He nods, his lips dragging back and forth against Louis’ skin. Somehow, without even knowing how or why, he knows that he has done this before with this person, that he has been touched by Louis before like this, that he has been kept safe by Louis’ hands. A beat passes in silence. 

Louis, nuzzling at Harry’s hair, whispers, “Can I touch you here?” His hand rests above the back of Harry’s briefs, a wide span against his fevered skin. 

Harry shivers at the suggestion, at the way his cock throbs. He feels so good and warm, so pretty between Louis’ hands. He doesn’t think that he has ever been safer or more comfortable in his skin. Nails biting crescent moons into the back of Louis’ neck and his shoulder, Harry whispers, “Please.” 

“Always,” Louis’ hands are reverent as they sneak under his briefs to the warm, goose-bumped skin along his bum and his upper thighs. Harry consciously unclenches his hands against Louis’ back: his shoulders are a revelation under Harry’s touch, his shoulder blades like wings, like mountains caught, and when he scratches, Louis purrs into his neck, his hands going tight around Harry’s bum. Harry cannot stop himself from shivering into Louis’ tighter grip, his lips smudging a moan against Louis’ neck, “Like that?” 

Harry is helpless. He nods, can’t stop nodding. 

Louis’ thumbs catch in the divots of his hips, “Can I touch you here?” A whisper against the front of Harry’s briefs, a suggestion without pressure. 

There are moments when Harry feels like he is jumping without a bungee cord, and then there is this moment, and the way Harry can hardly speak the words, “Please touch me everywhere,” before he is being laid onto his back, Louis’ gentle, exploring fingers taking down his boxers in a movement that is more liquid than solid. Harry releases his hold reluctantly, bare and pale, exposed to Louis’ warm gaze.

For a moment that Harry measures in pulses of heat soaring through his body, Louis stares at him with wide eyes. Louis is still looking at Harry, still measuring him, when he picks up Harry’s leg and places Harry’s ankle near his lips. 

“I’ve dreamt about this moment,” Louis confesses to the skin behind his knee before he begins kissing down Harry’s calf. Harry tries to still the emotion in his chest long enough to breathe in, to get air to his overheated head. He is startled into near stillness by Louis kissing his ankle, “I’ve dreamt about you like this.” 

“Like what?” Harry has his arms above his head, and his hair is a wreck of curls around him, tangled and frizzy from the kissing. He tries to imagine how he looks through the eyes of divinity: the weird places around his hips, his cock reddened at the tip and leaking, his goosebumped ribs and stomach, trying not to curl up around the almost-tickle of Louis’ lips traveling back up his leg. 

Louis smiles, biting at the very beginning of Harry’s thigh. His hands feel like a brand on Harry’s skin. Teeth glittering a hard white in the moonlight, Louis says, “Like you’re mine.” 

Harry reaches for Louis, needy and cold without his lips. When their lips meet, his leg hitched around Louis’ hip, a hand reaching between them for his throbbing cock, he whispers, “I’ve always been yours--” Harry’s breath hitches on the upstroke, heart in free fall as Louis grinds his clothed cock into the space below his balls, the seam near where Harry aches for him, “Always.” Admitting it, setting the words free, feels safe in the place between their panting mouths. 

Feeling electric, loose-limbed and hot to the touch, Harry fumbles for Louis’ waistband. He’s clumsy with it. Louis smiles against his mouth, reaching down to help Harry, and together, kissing, they bring Louis’s briefs down. The moment skin is revealed, Harry touches like he has wanted to for months: Louis’ thighs quiver when Harry scratches them, his butt tightening up as Harry rakes his nails over it. Harry feels powerful and wanted, as Louis gasps into their kisses. 

“You’re going to kill me,” Louis whispers as he breaks the kiss. His fingers ghost, just enough to make Harry shiver with pleasure, down his side, “I can’t touch you enough.” 

His words make Harry tighten his legs, his back arching, “We have time, yeah?” 

Louis’ blue eyes crinkle with his smile, “Yeah,” a playful, gentle swat to the meat of Harry’s butt makes him gasp, a shockwave of pleasure moving down his spine, “But I feel so— I  _ love  _ you.” 

“I’ve always loved you,” Harry combs through the fringe pieced over Louis’ forehead to avoid his searching eyes, “Feels like I loved you before I even knew you.” 

A sudden, fierce kiss steals Harry’s breath. His entire world rearranges on its axis for this, for the weight of Louis’ body between his legs, for the heat of Louis’ hands along his sides and in his hair, for the broken, quiet way he moans when Harry pushes their hips together, warm and wanting and open. He feels, suddenly, urgently, that he must have this now. 

“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Louis pants into his cheek, rutting their hips together.

The friction presses any words that Harry could’ve possibly said out of his mouth to make place for a stuttered inhale that gets caught around the back of his throat for the way Louis drags his cock against Harry’s. They are both hard and wet, smudging precome down into the places where their cocks drag together. The movements are aimless until Louis, calloused hands and soft mouth and raspy stubble, fits a hand around Harry’s side to turn him over. 

They work together to get Harry, kiss drunk and soft, onto his front. Kisses smudged against his shoulder, his hips tilted up for the heft of Louis’ cock to slide into the cleft of his arse, and Harry understands exactly what he is supposed to do. He instinctively rocks back for the pressure of Louis’ cock near where he wants him, near where he can feel himself clenching. The slight embarrassment, knowing that Louis can see how greedy he is, how much he aches, has Harry coming quickly onto the sheets with Louis not far behind, his breathing going shallow against the back of Harry’s neck. 

* * *

Harry dreams of a hot, beige tent and a hot, beige desert. He has dreamt of herbs in his hands more times than he can count now, and this dream does not disappoint him: clutched in his hands almost too tightly are yarrow and calendula. The heat feels unwavering against his skin, even through the cloth of the tent, and he looks around, startled, only to realize that Louis is seated on the makeshift mattress across from him. 

The room is tense, Harry can feel this, even in his dream. His shoulders are notched up to his ears, and his fingers feel like they are near to cramping around the herbs. Louis will not stop fussing with the white fabric of his tunic, worrying it between his fingers. Without knowing how or why he knows, Harry realizes that they are standing on the edge of something, that a choice has been made without his participation. He has followed this man into something unknown and sinister, something that asks for them without guaranteeing anything. The sun glares at them as they wait. Harry knows his name, has said it a thousand times, but when he opens his mouth,  _ “Achilles”  _ comes out in a careworn tone. 

Louis, the person who looks so like Louis, lifts his head. His beauty still sends a shock through Harry’s entire body. His blue eyes are the same but his skin is darkened from the unrelenting sun, and there is sand in his hair and smudged across his arms and legs, red and dusty. This familiar person watches Harry for a long moment before he is rising. Harry recognizes the patterns of scars on his arms. 

Louis crosses the space between them in two confident strides, a hand outstretched for the nape of Harry’s neck. Even though the name is unfamiliar on his tongue, the way that this man who looks like Louis kisses him, the way he touches Harry’s neck, these both feel familiar. Harry kisses back. The herbs fall to the floor between them. 

When they have kissed the world into twilight, kissed the tent into calm, blue eyes find Harry’s, “Philtatos,” a warm sweeping across his neck, back and forth, times his pulse, “What has Hector ever done to me?” 

Harry jolts awake to an empty bed. 

* * *

The first couple of days feel like Harry’s old anxiety in Minnesota when Louis was already in Colorado waiting for him. Harry spends the days locked in the herb room or locked in their bedroom, one of Louis’ shirts on. He tells himself, over and over again, that their relationship is not the reason for this, has nothing to do with Louis’ sudden disappearance. His lips still echo with the weight of Louis’ mouth, and his hips are intimately familiar with the brands of Louis’ fingers now. It makes the missing all the harder. 

Harry is on his third day of self-imposed silence when the man finds him hiding. Louis has been gone for three days, and the hole in his chest has refused to close its mouth, refused to stop shouting, red hot and molten in the center. His emotions have become a pendulum: somewhere between hurt and angry and in love, Harry recalls Louis’ touches as if he dreamt them up. It has become a mantra inside of his head:  _ you don’t touch someone like that and then leave them, you don’t touch someone like that and then leave them.  _ The man, a coffee cup held against his lower lip, spends long moments watching Harry’s face, his mouth screwed up into a focused scowl. 

“Did he tell you who I am?” 

Harry does not respond. He fears what he will say if he opens his mouth, if he lets the hungry, clawing thing in his chest out. 

The man sets his cup down against the wooden table Harry uses to mix his herbs before he begins speaking, “I have known you, Harry Styles, for centuries.” 

Without saying anything, without even looking up, Harry continues using the mortar and pestle. The words should alarm him, maybe, or make his heart beat faster, but Harry finds a resonance inside of himself, something unlocked and singing like it knew. There are tunnels in Harry’s mind that he finds difficult to touch at and images that feel like part-memories, the imprint of something important. 

“You have used many names,” the man leans forward, the dark sheet of his hair falling in waves over his shoulders and onto the table, “and you have lived in many lifetimes.” 

Harry’s hands tremble, but he keeps working: the name, the tent, his dreams. They are all coming into clearer focus. 

“But no matter  _ where  _ you are or  _ who  _ you are, your soul is never far from his,” the man’s voice is a low, constant murmur as he continues talking, his hands working up under the sleeve of his t-shirt to touch at something there, “I have known many restless souls, but never one like his. Never one that comes back so intently to be with another. He will be back.” 

When Harry does not respond, the man continues, louder, “He has never failed to come back to you. You were laid to rest together the first time, and you have lain together every time since, Patroclus.” 

Harry starts, “What did you call me?” 

“Achilles,” the man says, his dark eyes intent on Harry’s face, “has never failed to come back to you. Whatever he is, he was created for you only. And whatever you are, you have always been with him.” A smile quirks up the man’s lips, “I should know.” 

As the man turns to leave, the white shirt he is wearing, worn and torn in places, goes translucent, revealing lines of dark ink across his back. Harry draws a sharp breath that sticks in the back of his throat: the back piece is a series of bloody battle scenes, each hero slain in their final battle, each piece melting into an equally horrifying picture. There is so much death that it makes Harry’s throat constrict with fear and sadness. 

“Who are you?” Harry asks when he has reclaimed his voice. 

The man’s laugh is bitter when he says, “This time around? Alessandro. To history? Chiron.” 

* * *

Louis comes back to him on a day that feels sharp like fall. The air is biting, the leaves have gone orange, yellow, and red, and Harry has the windows open, the wind whistling through the gap rustling the flowers on the walls. The room sings when he lets the outside in, and Harry likes that, likes the feeling that everything is alive and possible. He is humming to himself, drawing a sprig of lavender, when he hears the floor creak. 

Standing in the doorway, backlit by the golden autumn sun, Louis smiles softly at him. 

Harry can’t speak for the affection in his throat. He has spent days thinking about Louis in wakefulness and sleep, and none of that dreaming has done the person standing in the doorway any justice. They have been through so much together. Harry does not know how to tell Louis that he understands, that he knows why they are here and what they have gone through. 

Louis inhales sharply before he speaks, “You dreamt of us.” 

Silent, Harry nods. 

“When you dream of us,” Louis’ hands tighten into fists in his pockets, “what do you see?” 

“The desert,” Harry has to clear his throat to get the words out, “tents, a war, I took your armor--”

“What about us?” 

Harry bites his lip. All he can think of is that word,  _ philtatos,  _ and the hand, strong and soft and loving, on the nape of his neck. It sounds ridiculous in his head, but when Harry says it out loud, he knows that it is true, “You died for me.” 

“You are the love of every one of my lives,” Louis whispers to the herbs and the sunlight and, most of all, to Harry, “We are born to this, but I have never regretted having lifetimes to love you.” 

Harry can’t breathe for the feeling in his chest. 

“I will  _ never _ regret loving you,” Louis laughs, something small and shaky, “I will always come home to you. I will always find you.” 

“Come here,” Harry says, the emotion sweeping his chest in a wave. He cannot have Louis close enough, he cannot touch enough of Louis’ skin or kiss him deeply enough, “Please, Lou, I--” 

Louis crowds him against the worktable, a hand on either side of his waist so that he can’t move, and Harry looks up at him: this tired-eyed, big-hearted god that he has centuries with. Harry knows in his mind that he can be less urgent. That thought does not affect the pace of his hands, as he holds onto the hinges of Louis’s strong, scruffy jaw. 

“Philtatos,” Louis murmurs with his eyes closed, his mouth open against the purple veins in Harry’s wrist. 

The moments they spent together in that tent, the tension between them, comes rushing back to Harry. In that dream, he hadn’t gotten a chance to kiss Louis for as long as he’d wanted. Now, watching Louis just breathe with his eyes closed, his lips timing Harry’s pulse, Harry knows that he will not make the same mistake. His lips leave kisses like constellations against Louis’ cheek and the side of his mouth until, finally, they are kissing. 

Harry is pressed into the wood behind him, and his hands are too tight on Louis’ back, but he kisses with all of the might of the wave, a whole ocean, cresting in his chest. His strength could protect Louis from everything, could keep him safe from the world. Harry has to believe that. 

* * *

They curl up against the cold of autumn together. Chiron does not bother them with training requests; wherever Louis went, whatever he was doing without Harry, has seemingly satisfied his teacher. Instead, they spend their days reading and lying in the sun, measuring hours by how many times Harry gets caught staring at Louis and how many kisses Louis leaves across his shoulders and neck. They do not talk about it, but Harry can feel it in the weight of Louis’ gaze: there is more to them, more to their story than even Harry can guess. 

One day, as the sun is coasting behind the mountains, Harry leans back against Louis’ chest and asks the question he has been weighing for days now, “Why did you leave?”

Louis’ careful, gentle fingers continue moving up and down Harry’s arm, “We have been prophesied for centuries.” 

_ Centuries  _ sends an entire winter’s worth of shivers down Harry’s body. He draws closer into the shelter of Louis’ body, a hand against Louis’ thigh as his breaths ruffle the hair near the crown of Harry’s head. Centuries feels both far and near at the same time; like, if Harry reached out a hand, he could touch their centuries together, but also like he sometimes forgets that Louis has scars on his back from wars fought thousands of years ago. 

“Thetis, she… The first time...” Louis’ lungs expand against Harry’s back. The words, when they finally come, are sighed familiarly into the stubborn cowlick near the top of Harry’s head, “‘Two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy / My journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love / My pride, my glory dies… True, but the life’s that left me will be long, / The stroke of death will not come on me quickly.’” 

“What is that?” Harry murmurs, his fingers spread wide over Louis’ thigh. He won’t allow Louis to be taken from him again: not by Chiron, not by Thetis, not by anyone. 

“The prophecy given to me by Thetis when I was first born,” Louis’ hand does not still in its careful rhythm. Combined with the rising and falling of Louis’ chest, Harry could be lulled to sleep by it, if he let himself. The tone of Louis’ voice, though, keeps Harry from fully tipping over the edge into exhaustion. He needs to know this. He can sense that this will help armor him against Thetis. “The first time, in Troy… I chose for us.” 

Harry’s hand clenches against Louis’ thigh. 

“We made an agreement just before the War of the Roses,” Louis’ hand raises to the side of Harry’s neck, his thumb just skimming Harry’s throat before moving down his arm, “We switch now.” 

“Switch?” Harry’s voice sounds faint, even to his own words. 

Louis’ mouth against the nape of Harry’s neck is distracting: the quicksilver flash of his teeth, the warm wetness of his tongue, the hand that Harry can’t help but use to keep his head there. They’re too new to it to be having this conversation: Harry is still too distracted by Louis’ mouth and his hands. 

“We were feeling very diplomatic,” his smile is hidden in Harry’s skin. 

“Lou,” Harry croons, his eyes are closing. The world could burn around them, and he would be content to stay in this moment, in this love. There is no telling how long the silence between them lasts. Harry mulls it over: the burgeoning knowledge of the centuries between them, the confidence of Louis’ hands and the familiar bite of his teeth, the awareness of all of the things that they have been through together.  _ Whatever he is, he was created only for you. _ When he has finished thinking about it, Harry turns so that he can look at Louis’ face. Harry loves his hazy blue eyes and his sharp smile, the blond just barely in the ends of his hair, “Why do we keep coming back?” 

Louis’ smile crinkles up the corners of his eyes, “I don’t know exactly.” His voice lilts up slightly at the end as he continues to speak, “The Gods will it so? We have unfinished business? Maybe,” here, finally, he opens his eyes to meet Harry’s gaze, “Maybe the Gods will respond to you, if you ask them.” 

Harry’s heart takes root in his chest. This tired-eyed, big-hearted demigod is his, and he does not want to give the Gods cause to watch them more closely. Harry knows they have hurt each other and been hurt before. Even in his dreams, he could sense that pain underlying their conversations. 

“I haven’t spent centuries loving you just to give you up now,” Harry’s voice rasps around the words, makes them into something almost bashful, almost sacred. He can’t keep the shrug out of his voice when he says, “All stories have an ending, Lou.”    
  


“And ours?” Louis’ hand touches his cheek, cradles him, “You’re not curious?” 

“No,” Harry can’t help but smile into the warmth of Louis’ gaze and his touch, “I would come back a thousand times more, if it meant I got to be loved by you.” 

When Louis kisses him, Harry can taste his happiness and his relief and the honey he had in his tea. They will talk about going back to the real world, to their real lives, later. Now, this is more important. If they have the hard conversations now, they can shore themselves up against Thetis and against anyone else who tries to pry them apart. Louis kisses him with a fierce determination and a hand on the side of his face and his sharp canine teeth and all Harry can think is:  _ how lucky I am to be loved by you.  _

* * *

The first day the rain does not stop, Louis crowds Harry up against a tree on the edge of the training yard. They are soaked to the bone, raw and wet and dark eyed, something like lightning singing in the spaces between them. Harry can’t touch Louis enough: his hair wet and in his eyes, his warm biceps, his aching wrists, the spaces between his ribs and the breadth of his shoulder blades. Louis shivers and shivers and shivers, his arms around Harry’s waist, his mouth caught on the hinge of his jaw. Their bows lie near them in a heap. If Chiron saw, his mouth would turn down at the corners, and his eyes would go tight, but Chiron is gone for the day. Training in the cold quickly gave way to this fumbling rush under a tree. They imagine themselves into another life, an older life, a life where they are alone enough that they do not have to touch so urgently, a life where Harry does not exhale like he is wounded when he feels the edge of a scar across Louis’ left hip. 

Louis’ mouth stills on the pulse in his neck, “You can ask.” 

Harry traces the edges of the scar, the length of it. He thinks, maybe, if he closed his eyes, he could remember who or what did this to Louis, “Louis--”

“We were in Arizona territory in the 1870s,” the hands on Harry’s waist begin to soothe, “A son of Hades found us.” 

There is another scar. It runs parallel to the graceful line of Louis’ spine, part parenthesis, part exclamation point on another lifetime that Harry can’t yet recall. His fingers shake when he touches it. It is more than wanting to protect Louis, Harry thinks as his hands flatten to cover as much of Louis’ back as possible. Harry seeks out Louis’ mouth, the thin line of his upper lip, and he thinks about how hard it must be to always be the protector. 

They are kissing, close-mouthed and soft, when Louis whispers, “The War of the Roses. Your choice.” 

Harry feels like he is pleading, like he is begging each individual drop of rain, “No more wars, Lou.” His heart beats steady and strong against Louis’. In the shadow of the tree, in the shadow of this mountain, they are briefly safe. Harry does not know what will meet them on the other side of this, but he has to be sure, “No more fighting, please.” 

Louis laughs, fond and warm against his mouth, “We haven’t stopped fighting for four hundred years, love.” 

With his too big, too clumsy hands, Harry catches Louis’ face. He will not allow Louis to look away when he says, “No more, please.” 

Steady blue eyes hold Harry’s gaze. There is no doubt that the next thing Louis whispers to him between raindrops will be the truth, “I promise you once a lifetime to never fight again…” Small, thin lips find and measure Harry’s pulse in the center of his palm, “but you are so stubborn.” The words feel like rasp against his skin, “Every lifetime, I promise you, and every lifetime,” Louis’ inhale is shaky, his hands tighten, “I follow you into battle.” 

“I won’t ask again,” Harry pledges. His heart is beating too quickly in his chest.

“You promise me that too,” Louis closes his eyes, his lips still against the middle of Harry’s palm, “We are born into war, always.” A steady, open gaze pins and holds Harry while all of the sounds of nature still around them, “We were not meant to live quietly.” 

* * *

On the second day of nonstop rain, Harry falls asleep on the couch in the living room while Louis sits in the armchair with a thick book. 

This time, Harry wakes up to a stone walkway across a small moat. He knows without having to turn around that the building behind him is home: stone, square, a climbing ivy plant of the boldest red against the front facade. The gardens before him are spread out in a maze, but Harry knows, urgent in the thick air, that his lord is waiting in the exact arbor where they first kissed.  _ Their cottage  _ sits only on the other side of the water. Harry does not know if he will be able to wait that long. As soon as he’d heard the drumbeat of horses’ hooves on the dirt path, as soon as he’d seen the white and green banner flying, the ache in his body had given way to a deep sense of relief. He is back sooner than he said he would be. Harry can trace his longing for this reunion through the tumultuous summer, as the sweating sickness took London, as the King pondered his “Great Matter.” Harry waited here, bereft, keeping the massive castle company, keeping the wild gardens tended, aching to be reunited with his husband. Harry does not run, even though every part of himself strains towards where he knows his lord awaits. The only things keeping watch are the stars and the moon. Harry thinks, in his heart, that the moon would understand. 

Harry is barely breathing when he reaches the secluded, darkened arbor where his lord first kissed him. Leant against the trunk of an old oak tree, his white cotton shirt parted at the neck, golden and drowsy, Harry’s lord and husband stands. Harry cannot breathe -- the tightness in his chest could be from his almost-run here, but it is more likely the gaze, dark and hungry, which sweeps from his longer hair down to his bare feet and legs. He’d only had time to throw on a nightshirt. 

Breathless with it, aching, Harry whispers, “My lord.” 

His whole heart swells in his chest to hear the uneven, “My love” which he receives in return. 

It is dark, but their relationship is still not entirely accepted within the circles they travel in. Most people look the other way, because they are so in love. Harry knows that being found in his husband’s lap in the arbor is almost unforgivable, no matter what circle one rotates among. It is so great a sin that he would likely have to face down Wolsey or Thomas More. Still, always, Harry chooses his husband over his fear. 

His sharp-faced, tired-eyed love sinks to the bench as soon as Harry begins to walk towards him. His legs spread, just enough to reveal the strength of them, and Harry is powerless with the urge to wind his arms around his love’s neck, to sink into this man’s lap with a leg on either side of his waist. His nightshirt rises and, without a singular moment of pause, his love’s hands find his upper thighs and the sweet curve of his hips. Harry is exposed to only this man’s eyes. He has never felt more naked or more safe. 

“I have longed for the feeling of you in my arms,” his love, his fierce love, smooths two hands down the tops of his thighs, “You are every dream I have had, awake and asleep.” 

Harry surges forwards -- his love meets him halfway with a hand wound in the dark curls he has not cut all summer. He could not help it: thinking of the way his curls would shield their kisses, the way his love would pull his curls while they make love in their big white bed or in the hay, the way their kisses would taste like the end of June and the sweetness of strawberries. Harry’s hands refuse to still in his love’s hair. The heat of his chest beckons, and the bare peaks of his pectoral muscles, the thick swell between his legs, pushing on the leather bindings of his pants. Harry will have this man, bare and wanton, moaning for all of the castle hands to hear, right here. 

When they break apart to breathe, blue eyes framed in dark lashes find Harry’s. The man in Harry’s arms has lost weight and gained color to his skin, while he has been away. His thighs are stronger below Harry, but the jut of his cock and the bold, unashamed handfuls he grabs of Harry’s arse are familiar, feel like a dream, feel like all of the sweetest moments in all of Harry’s lives. 

“The King wanted me to convey a message to the mistress of Hever, but I am busy tonight,” Harry’s love whispers to his neck. 

Like a medic, Harry touches everything he can reach. The King is not a forgiving man, and Harry never knows if he will get someone whole home to him or someone who, like the mistress of the castle, has been left with the scars of standing up to Henry Tudor. Some sun, some grey shot through the ends of his hair, and the bags under his eyes are a small price to pay. Every night, on his knees in Hever’s small chapel, Harry asks only for the man that he loves to be returned to him whole. Harry does not believe in God the way that these people do. They have lived too many lives together, encountered the children of too many so-called “gods,” but when his love arches up into his body, two hands firmly anchored on the wanting flesh of Harry’s legs and bum, he thinks that a god has to exist, a god has to exist to put a name to the way this feels. 

“My lord,” Harry pulls back, a teasing smile on his face, “you have grey in the ends of your hair.” 

His lord, his Louis, turns his head to the side to show off the grey more fully to its advantage. He is sharp and handsome, like a wolf fresh from the hunt. Harry cannot look away, “What do you think, my husband?” 

“I would take you to bed,” the words get lost in the wind, in the sounds of birds settling for the night and the staccato of Harry’s too loud heart. He is never worried that Louis does not want him, but the reunions always make all of the months that Harry has spent missing Louis all the greater for a moment. His arms, his bed, his home have been empty. The memory of Louis lives in the corners of their bedroom, haunted and darkened. Harry will have this man in every corner of their space now. Everything will be light again. 

They barely make it through the front door before his lord, Louis, hitches the ends of his nightshirt above his waist, a hand on the back of his knee to raise his thigh. Harry winds his arms around Louis’ strong neck and broad shoulders, watches the way his eyes appreciatively take in Harry’s cock and legs, the interested quirk of his mouth as he nuzzles into Harry’s cheek. 

“I swear to the gods that you are more beautiful every time I see you,” Louis’ hands tremble as he raises Harry’s other thigh, deftly picking him up and anchoring him against the wall. 

Harry smiles, his mouth moving against the sun-rough skin of Louis’ cheek, “My lord, tell me again.” 

A kiss is pressed to Harry’s nose before the warm mouth moves to his ear. A hand, strong and sure, finds its way to Harry’s bum, “Your hair is so beautiful when it is long.” Their breaths hitch in sync for the way that Harry rests his head back against the wall, a hand going to his own chest to touch his nipples. No one had ever told Harry about the rush to feel, to come together, when you have been parted from the other half of your heart. Now, and in every one of his lifetimes, Harry will take what he can have from this man whenever this man will give it to him. He cannot stop a broken moan from tumbling out of his mouth at the first rough thrust of Louis’ cock against his bum. It is leather and warmth, a feeling so good it hurts. 

“Your hands, how I always miss your fingers,” the hand on Harry’s bum turns rough and coaxing, a stinging slap laid against the skin that causes Harry’s cock to flex and blurt come. 

Together, suddenly so urgent, they wrestle with the laces on Louis’ riding pants. Harry sewed the pants carefully, but he can’t remember the hours or the work or the pride he’d felt, when he can feel Louis’ cock hard and hot beneath the fabric. They jostle and grin at each other, neither hearing the piece of parchment that floats to the floor from Louis’ pocket. There are some promises that they must keep together, like this, in the quiet of their homes. Fingers shaking, Harry finally frees Louis’ cock from the confines of his breeches. Somehow, every inch of Louis’ body remains golden. He is thick and hot, leaking at the head, and Harry aches with his desire to taste. So reverently that he would be branded a heretic by their King, Harry brings a finger to his mouth, sucking Louis’ taste from the pad of his own finger. 

A low, wavering sound follows the parting of his lips, “I would give every one of my lifetimes to have you like this, always.” 

Harry grins, bringing his finger to Louis’ mouth, to trace the seam of his lips, “Caught between a wall and your cock, my lord?” 

Louis wraps a hand around their cocks, bringing them into his work roughened palm. He gentles horses with these hands, he holds reigns and goblets and the plate of gold the King uses, but he holds nothing as tenderly as he holds Harry, “Always close to me. Always looking at me like you would die without my kiss.” 

Harry doesn’t have to think about it, “I would, my Louis.” 

They rut against the wall, loud and unashamed, Harry’s hands caught in the slivering strands of Louis’ hair. Louis shudders into their touches as they move closer to the moment that he will leave Harry with only a reminder of their coupling and ease them down from the wall. Their home already feels lighter around him. 

  
  


* * *

The next day, as Harry is lacing up his hair with the leather ties that Louis brought back for him, he finds a worn piece of parchment on the floor of their entryway. He stills, entire heart lodged in his throat when he sees the writing. The spindly handwriting is not familiar to him, and there isn’t a seal or signature to further clarify who could be sending letters this way. Harry tries to breathe through the panic lodged in his throat. Yes, things are unstable in England right now, but that has been the reality for their whole lives now. It is too soon, they haven’t had long enough. This note, this small piece of paper, sends Harry’s heart skittering. Almost without thinking, the edge of Harry’s middle finger ends up trapped between his front teeth. It can’t be now. 

Written, almost too small to be read, smudged by the never ceasing rain, in the corner of the paper:  _ C, fortnight.  _

Harry crumples against the wall. 

* * *

The decision to go to Calais for Louis takes a few hours to solidify. At first, all Harry can feel is the numb shock of another lifetime taken from them without regard for how much life they have left to live together. It was only yesterday that Harry discovered that his lord has grey in the ends of his hair. Two days is not long enough to relearn this new, sharp-faced man with the same hands as his Louis. The horses’ foals were born only a week hence — Harry has spent hours imagining the golden, gentle soothe of Louis’ hands against the slim flank of newborn, wobbly-legged horses. Eventually, as Harry is sweeping the floor in the kitchen, the feeling in his chest morphs into anger. The broom trembles between his hands as Harry fights down the nausea in his stomach. Why aren’t things ever easy for them? 

The ache is in his throat, rising into a tingling in his nose, and a persistent pain behind his eyes. Every time, they run away and settle somewhere quietly, but they are never far enough away to escape the weight of Louis’ responsibilities. Harry would swear to never lift another herb again if it meant not having to run anymore. He would forsake the easy melting of water through his fingers as he gathers rich, fertile soil from the creek beds and the hollow echo of a shell against his ear. Dust motes dance through the golden light filtering through the window, and Harry leans against his broom, caught out in the center of their kitchen, his heart on tenterhooks. 

The door opens and closes quietly, letting in the smell of muggy summer and the syrupy sweetness of horse sweat on Louis’ clothes. Harry turns, surreptitiously dashing at the wetness on his cheeks with the back of his hand, to face the welcome arrival of Louis in their doorway. 

Louis brings lightness into the house. He trails golden energy into the kitchen as he grabs a glass of mead, as he presses a fleeting kiss to the side of Harry’s mouth. 

“My love,” he belongs at this rough hewn table in their small kitchen, sweat on his brow, a streak of dirt across the sharp angle of his collarbone, “How has your day been? 

Harry is already homesick for Louis’ hands. He settles the broom in the corner of the room before crossing the space between them. As Harry lifts himself onto the table, in between Louis’ strong thighs, he tries to still the storm in his mind: the note, Calais, the home they share, the herbs drying on racks, the nightshirt that Louis pushed from his shoulders last night before they tripped into the bedroom, attached at the lips and hips. Harry keeps his eyes at a level with Louis’ throat, pretending an intense scrutiny. He does not know if he can lie directly to Louis’ honest eyes. 

“You’ve brought some of the horses home to me,” Harry reaches out with his thumb, to trace the strong line of Louis’ collarbone. 

“The new filly is beautiful, my love,” Louis thumbs at the ripped knee of Harry’s pants, “Did you name her?”    
  


She was born on a day when the sun absolutely refused to hide behind a cloud. Her mother labored for less time than was normal, and she was born: wet with blood, a matted white rump and the dark, interested flick of her ears as she nuzzled into her mum’s flank and then Harry’s hand. Her first steps were unbalanced, but she flicked her tail, took the apple that Harry was eating, and went on her way. Harry had loved her that first day. Him and Louis never quite get around to raising children. The horses and the cows, the small animals that always find their way into Harry’s arms, they gentle something wild and wide inside of him. 

Harry’s heart lurches with the knowledge that he will not watch her grow strong and sleek in the Indian summer, “Sunflower.” 

Louis chuckles, low and only for Harry, “It’s perfect, darling.” His hands settle against Harry’s thigh, holding him for what he will say next in the same way that he gentles a horse, “They are well-loved by you.” 

Cheeks growing warmer, Harry ducks into the neck of his white shirt, trying to hide the way that those simple words send a profusion of contentment through him. Harry worries that Louis will read the dual sadness in his eyes at those words. 

The hands on his thighs squeeze, “ _ I  _ am well-loved by you.” 

Harry’s voice sounds tremulous when he says, “You are my entire heart, my lord.” 

They kiss in the glare of sunlight filtering through the window. It is the hottest part of the day, and the sweat along Harry’s hips and the nape of his neck is not lessened by the trail of Louis’ fingers through his hair and the hasty loosening of his breeks to make way for Louis’ gentle hands. Harry feels barely contained as he paws and squeezes and scratches at the sun-warmed skin of Louis’ strong back and his thighs, hardened from months spent in the saddle. Harry tunes out the voice in his head and heart that whispers  _ This is it. This is all there is.  _ Louis has always been Harry’s beginning and ending. Going to Calais is nothing more than repaying a favor that Harry has been holding onto for centuries. 

After, when Louis whispers that he has business in the manor, Harry holds him between his thighs and between his palms and says, “My heart goes with you, my Louis.” 

Louis’ hands steady his waist and caress the jut of his hip, his face still buried in Harry’s mussed curls, “They will not part me from your arms so soon, I promise.” 

Harry doesn’t say  _ I have made my own decision.  _ He doesn’t say  _ These quiet lives are not meant for us.  _ Between them, in the still air, they know that these lives never unwind in a straight line. There is always something waiting for them. Louis goes to the house with a spring in his step and a purpling bruise on his shoulder from Harry’s teeth. Harry slips his clothes on silently, watching the way the sun shines over the vase of English roses they keep. Mourning this life will not change anything -- not their home, left empty here, not his heart breaking, not the sadness he feels at leaving everything he loves. Bracing himself with a hand on the table, Harry leans down, his forehead to the warm wood. A single moment with his eyes closed is not enough to relive the life they have led together. Harry does not try to. Instead, Harry steels himself. His resolve will not waver. 

The brown destrier that they raised together awaits him in the stables. Harry hastily packs a small bag with coins, hard cheese, and bread, against the worry that he ends up roughing it on the side of the road. It should be criminal, Harry thinks, to repack a bag so recently put to rest near the warm fire, so recently put out of use for the first time in months. The bag smells of Louis: his sweat, the time that he spent on the road this last summer, the heat of his skin. In the stillness of their kitchen, Harry inhales deeply from the fabric. He is not scared, but the lingering smell still softens the sharp edge of his anxiety. Pulling the bag over his shoulder, Harry hastens out the back door of their home. This way faces away from the manor home -- no one will see him if he sticks to back paths and keeps his head down. 

The welcome rustling of fallen leaves helps to somewhat dampen the sounds of Harry’s passage through the grounds to the stables. The gardens and arbors here, the fountain and the statues, these are the places where they fell in love. As Harry ducks around corners and wills his own footsteps quieter, he can’t help but think of them, younger and brighter, so in love that they kissed in any shaded nook without fear of anyone seeing them. Running, the ache, the fear, the freedom, was not a deterrent to them as they have spent many lifetimes on their feet. His heart in his chest, Harry peers into the last stretch of path between the gardens and the stables. It is empty. The last look at Hever, at her ivy-lined, calm facade and her square, comforting bulk rising from the idyllic pastures, twists something inside of him. Harry’s heart aches for the mistress of Hever and her daughters -- a mistress who has protected them and sheltered them, even after she knew, and the way that the King looks at her daughters. Nothing comes without a price in this world. The closer Harry gets to the smell of warm horse and hay, the less sure he is that anyone is up to paying that price. 

Their horse does not make any noise as Harry notches the saddle into place. If he knows what is happening, behind his placid black eyes and his single knicker, he does not give Harry any indication. Saddled up, Harry’s provisions nestled in the saddle bag, Harry holds onto the stable wall to steady himself. His last chance to back out does not feel any different than it had in Troy. Like then, the same singular thought has taken hold of him: if not me, then him. 

Harry does not look back. 

* * *

Overland, pausing only to rest for a midday meal and to sleep, Harry makes good time to the port of Dover. Fall in England has turned the land into a burnt orange rush that Harry observes between the ears of their horse and measures by the crunching of hooves against the well-worn paths. The hard riding is good: it jolts Harry out of his illusions. There is no going back to Hever, no pretending that this didn’t happen. The pain in his ribcage and hips cements Harry into his reality. Louis is kilometers away and getting farther with each day -- he will board the boat. He will save Louis from whatever awaits them on the other side. 

When Harry finally steps onto the boat that will bear him across the sea, he is unmoored by the pain in his lower back and thighs. His legs quake with the force of stopping after his mad dash cross-country. The pain in his legs distracts him from the weight of his heart in his chest, at least. If he has something to occupy his thoughts that isn’t Louis, then the time will pass less painfully. It is with a relieved smile that Harry goes below decks to find the cabin that he will spend the next few hours in. A small, dark, cramped space greets Harry. There is no need for more room. It is just himself. They don’t need any extra space around the bed for the tired, pleased way that Louis takes off his boots before he kisses Harry’s neck or the sturdy table in their kitchen with the extra chairs for all of the times that Louis decides he can’t wait for their bedroom. The visions swim up behind Harry’s eyes before he can stop them. Running a roughened hand across his forehead, Harry levers his tired body onto the bed, only to tilt back and close his eyes against the light and noise of the ship leaving port. 

Harry must drift off, because he comes awake to the sound of his door closing. His eyes open slowly to the person standing in the doorway. There is a measure of moments, taken by the throbbing of Harry’s aching heart, where he thinks that he must still be asleep: the sandy-haired, golden man of his dreams has come to his room, has come to take him back to their quiet life together. Around him, the boat has quieted to a low hum outside the door, and the dream boy, the man with silver in the ends of his hair stands against Harry’s door with his arms crossed, a smudge of dirt on the collar of the white shirt that Harry embroidered with anchors last winter. He’d left blood stains on the fabric. Louis, always appreciative, had kissed each finger that he’d hurt and worn the shirt, pinpricks of red and all. The waves rock the boat, the sound of men shouting orders crests and breaks in the background, and Harry stares, every single noise in his head quiet. 

The man with razor sharp teeth and silver in the ends of his hair whispers, “I knew as soon as I saw the empty bedroom.” 

Hand coming to rest against the pounding pulse in his throat, Harry manages, “Knew what?” 

“That’d you set this,” Louis’ smile tips, flattens into something darker, “into motion again.” 

“I’m protecting you,” Harry can feel the bile rising in his throat as he struggles up in the bed, “I’m  _ protecting you.”  _

One of the work roughened hands that Harry knows so well, that has mapped every inch of Harry’s body, comes to rest over Louis’ eyes. Harry’s heart dips and speeds. He means it -- protecting Louis was the only goal in his mind when he set out on their horse. Louis would have figured things out sooner or later, and he would’ve been angry with Harry, but that is temporary when compared to death. Louis’ strong upper body folds in on itself, silent and stubborn, as Harry watches. His mind has gone blank with anxiety when Louis begins to speak. 

“We were going to live quietly,” Louis’ voice is muffled by the heel of his hand, “in that cottage. We were going to raise horses and-- and be  _ happy  _ with that.” 

The words that Harry was going to respond die on his tongue. 

“We were going to  _ avoid  _ this fate.” Watery, blue eyes search the cabin before landing on Harry. Louis’ mouth is set in a stubborn line, “We’ve  _ never  _ avoided this fate before, and I thought -- this once, alone -- I would be enough to keep you there and to keep you hidden from  _ her  _ and  _ them,  _ and--,” voice thready, near breaking, Louis finishes, “We will not return from this. We cannot hide from fate now.” 

Harry can’t hear anything over the thundering of his heart in his ears. 

Louis’ hard-edged laugh makes something in Harry crack down the middle, “It didn’t have to be like this, Harry.” 

For a time measured in the heaving of Louis’ shoulders and the rocking of the boat, Harry thinks about all of the places that he has carried Louis’ fate. Every life, Harry wears the knowledge of Louis’ life, his unavoidable ending, like a brand across his chest, like a bite on the back of his knee, like an itch below the center of his back in a place that he can’t reach. Harry’s own involvement in their myth is something that he would never trade for anything. Even if death is their only choice, Harry would make it in every one of his lifetimes if it meant that he got to be with Louis. The amount of time isn’t of consequence to Harry. Louis’ love, his presence, is the beginning and end of Harry’s life every time. 

Clearing his throat, a hectic red bloomed across his cheeks, Harry meets Louis’ gaze head on, “Gods don’t make bargains with mortals.” Harry hears it in every voice that has ever repeated that mantra to him: his mom, his dad, Louis, Thetis, Chiron, all of them. 

Louis shakes his head, a sharp cut of hair moving into his eyes. 

“Then we’ve no choice but to meet this,” Harry sweeps an anxious curl behind his shoulder, eyes on the floor, “I’ll love you for as long as they let me. I loved you yesterday, and I love you today,” Harry’s voice goes thin, too gruff and low, “I love you so much today, and I’ll love you in Greece or Rome or Calais or the New World or--” 

Louis hands on the hinges of his jaw stop the words spilling from Harry. He can do nothing but clutch at the strong places above Louis’ hips and whimper into the bruising kisses that Louis seals his mouth with, again and again and again, until their mouths are deep red, and Louis is teething at his lower lip. They kiss until the light through the windows fails, and the rocking of the boat has become something less noticeable, until they are likely very nearly in port at Calais. 

“The gods will have to beg my forgiveness for always taking you from me,” Louis’ thumbs move back and forth across the apples of Harry’s too warm cheeks. 

Harry covers the hands that he loves, the hands that he actively longs for with his own, “They’ve been forgiven.” The first time, when Louis’ cries had stirred the ocean and broken Thetis’ resistance, rises powerfully into Harry’s chest, “I have you.” 

* * *

In Colorado, Harry wakes up gradually. First, his gritty, sleep-heavy eyes. His mom’s voice echoes in his head,  _ Be careful, Harry, not so hard,  _ but he still scrubs at his eyes too roughly. Then, his body. He is too warm here. Between the pillow that he holds clutched to his chest and the blanket that someone has thrown over him, Harry tries to straighten himself out and evaluate how he feels. His back protests the sudden stretch, as Harry reaches for the arm of the chair to elongate his whole body. It is only when he goes to move his ankles that he fully feels the pressure around one of them. 

Curled into the couch, his hand wrapped firmly around Harry’s ankle, Louis snores faintly into the blanket that he must’ve thrown over Harry. Harry looks at him: at his closed eyes and the slight crinkles forming near their edges, his sharp cheekbones, and the part of his lips. Something, maybe the very center of his heart, gives a tug. Everything begins and ends with this boy, with this  _ man.  _ Harry wishes that he could describe how that feels to someone, but he doesn’t know that he has the words for carrying someone’s life within and without himself always. There are no words to describe the lives and the loves that they carry, only between themselves, the secrets across centuries. Harry thinks that they must give off their own light, through the lives they’ve lived, something godly or something un-godly. All of these things, given to them by history and fate and out of their hands. The only thing that Harry can claim for his own is Louis. Louis is his, and the thought blooms warm and sure in his chest. 

In the dark of the kitchen, Alessandro freezes, a hand on the countertop. 

* * *

Harry does not really remember how they get back down to the airport. There are trees and the river running in and out of the trees, and then, suddenly, the highway and the other cars. The last thing that Harry can clearly remember is Alessandro in the entryway, closing the door on them without a backward glance. Alessandro did not let their goodbyes linger. He looked at Louis, once, and said, “I will see you again, Achilles.” Louis smiled, his sad, half smile, and then he turned his back on the open doorway. The man who has fed and clothed them for a year looked next at Harry. He didn’t say anything to Harry. Instead, he gave Harry a bundle of sage, the kind that grows strong and green on the mountain. Harry swallowed all of the things that he wanted to say. The only thing that would fit into the space between them was a nearly silent, “Thank you.” Imprinted on the back of his eyes, Harry remembers the war scenes tattooed across Alessandro’s back. Harry vows, silently, that they will not be a reason for another tattoo. 

Louis leads them through the airport silently. He is wearing all grey -- from his worn Adidas sweatshirt to the sweatpants with the rip near his ankle. Harry trails him, feeling like he is more see-through than solid. All of the things that he has seen and learned and felt struggle to settle into an order again. They are not normal things, not everyday things, but Harry knows that, whatever shape his life will take, he will need the knowledge. Beyond that, he wants the bits and pieces that he collected of his and Louis’ lives up there. Those flashes are the important things, the things that he will not give up at any time. They are waiting in security, Harry watching the rain out the window, when Louis’ hand slips into his. 

Harry looks down, to where their hands are bound between them, with his heart in his throat. It is a simple thing, a silent thing, a thing that Harry has not had time to take for granted in any of their lives. His heart thunders in his ears with the force of what he feels. 

“Okay?” Louis smiles, his hood covering how fluffy his hair had gotten when they opened the windows on the highway. 

Harry feels himself drawn into the radiance of Louis’ blue eyes in the grey light of the windows and the soothing glow of his hand in Harry’s. They ran from their unhappy homes together, ran from the pressure of their fate. They are grown up now. Harry blushes when Louis’ other hand brushes a curl from his forehead back. Even in the middle of a crowd of people anxiously waiting for security in the airport, their love cocoons them from everything else. It is the only thing that Harry wants to claim for his own. 

“Yeah,” Harry murmurs, bringing Louis’ hand to his lips, “Love you.” 

It is the simplest way for Harry to describe how he feels. 

Louis’ answering smile feels like coming home. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Stay safe and healthy.

**Three years later.**

“That won’t keep her out,” the voice in the doorway says. Then, softer, “Y’know that.”

Harry turns around slowly. Louis is staring at the hardwood floors glinting in the sunset coming through their glass doors. This is the first night they are spending in their new home. Harry is in the process of sage-ing their rooms. Chiron’s voice still echoes faintly in his ears, even all this time later. They need to cleanse the house before people come over.

Pushing his glasses up his nose, Harry says, “This isn’t about her.”

Louis’ lips quirk into a faint smile, “Isn’t it all about her?”

There’s really nothing to say to that because, in some ways, it is. They went to Colorado because Louis needed to be trained for what Thetis wanted. They came back to this place, back to Minnesota, for Thetis, but this house is theirs. It is about the life they wanted to live together, the life they envisioned together.

Harry breathes out long and slow, “This is about me.”

Face melting into a soft smile, Louis says, “Okay, my love.”

It still makes Harry blush to the roots of his hair. The easy affection, especially after that first year of wondering, settles like gold in Harry’s stomach. They have made it this far, and now they’re trying to decide where to put the furniture in their living room. His smile is reflected on Louis’ face: the same incandescent happiness shining like a guiding light.

For these few moments at least, Thetis feels far away.

Harry begins to trail sage around the edges of the room again, Louis’ eyes heavy on his back and slim thighs. He delights in it: the way that Louis’ gaze illuminates his skin, the safety of standing in their new living room and shaking his hips just to hear Louis chuckle, the relief that comes when Louis’ hands finally frame his waist, and the weight of their love filling up the corners of the room.

“I could eat the world raw,” Louis whispers into the wispy curls that have escaped Harry’s messy bun, his lips trailing soft kisses up the nape of Harry’s neck, “I’ve never loved you more.”

Their house glowing orange with the sunset shrouding them, Harry turns around to face Louis. He feels expansive. Their home is alight, and his chest is warm, and Louis smells like sunlight and seawater, salty and sweet. His hands make Harry glow gold.

“Tell me again,” Harry can’t resist a small smile against the warmth of Louis’ shoulder.

Louis’ hands trail across Harry’s back, “I could eat the world raw.”

Harry bites at Louis’ shoulder, “No.”

Lips moving against Harry’s temple, Louis whispers, “I’ve never loved you more.” There are a thousand universes where they couldn’t be together, where Louis’ demigod status would’ve made it impossible. Here, in this place, they are together. Harry tries to hold that close to his chest, “I’ve never loved anyone more.”

“I love you,” Harry presses into Louis’ neck, “I love you so much.”

Louis’ hands don’t still in their careful massaging of Harry’s lower back. He’s been careful, wearing an icy hot patch all day, but moving has still made the pain radiate out. Tomorrow, Harry knows that he’s going to feel this. He’ll have to get up a bit earlier to try to sneak some yoga in before his shift at the hospital.

“The boys’ll be here soon,” Louis says, when the silence around them has begun to turn twilight, “Did you want to change before they came over?”

Harry inhales, one more time, before he lifts his head up. Louis has on a sweater and a pair of black jeans, cuffed at the ankle. Even in February, his summer tan still glows. Their home looks good around him.

“Think I might,” Harry says.

Louis smiles, “Think I might’ve left your present on the bed.”

Their bedroom is in a state of disrepair. The wooden floors that Harry loves are covered in boxes, and the bed, the only thing they’ve put together outside of the kitchen, stands in a sea of gauzy curtains and their rumpled sheets from the nap they took earlier. Harry’s chest tightens when he sees how carefully Louis has laid out his bedside table and his alarm clock and the pictures he’s carried with him since he was twelve. It’s a comfort thing for Harry, and Louis knows that. Harry will thank him when he goes downstairs. 

Lying in the middle of the bed, a red bow tied around the hanger, is the transparent mauve Yves Saint Laurent shirt that Harry has been salivating over for months. He was so careful with his money before the move: would they have enough to pay rent? Would his dad somehow mess this all up? Would Gemma need help while she waited to hear back from the schools she’d applied to teach at? Louis has just kissed him and said  _ I understand. We’ll be careful. _

__

The shirt slips through Harry’s hands like water; the velvet is so soft against the rest of the fabric. Just looking at it sets Harry’s heart to beating frantically in his chest. He can’t believe this. The pair of black jeans he slides on over his socks won’t do the shirt justice or they’ll look silly or—

Harry’s reflection shimmers in the glass door leading out onto their patio.

“The boys are here.”

“You scared me,” Harry spins around with his hand over his heart.

“You look radiant,” Louis responds.

There is something infinitely more intimate about being told that he looks good by the man that he owns a house with. Entire body illuminated by Louis’ gaze, Harry blushes, “You think?” 

Louis’ eyes trace up from Harry’s feet to his eyes, “I know.” 

* * *

The next morning, while Louis is at work, Harry goes for a walk along the beach. It feels good to stretch his legs, especially after yesterday. By the time they’d gotten to the birthday party, the day had seemed interminable. Harry is so thankful for his friends, but he’d spent the whole night biting his lip at Louis and wishing, more than anything, to cozy up in their big bed. 

Now, with the sun shining along the nape of his neck, Harry allows himself a moment of silence: he closes his eyes against the lake, the trees, the sun, and he takes a deep breath. 

“You are running out of time,” Thetis’ voice sounds like rocks crashing together, like the entire earth is shifting. 

Harry debates keeping his eyes closed to prolong the peace before dealing with Thetis, “I know.” 

Thetis is a vision in the shallows: her long, dark hair and the pearly opalescence of her skin, and Harry has no idea how she could’ve possibly given birth to someone like Louis. Her cold couldn’t possibly have created Louis’ warm. She is looking him up and down when she says, “Gods do not stay for mortals.” 

If Thetis’ anger was going to make Harry go away, he would’ve left years ago. He doesn’t respond. All of the muscles that he’d worked so hard to loosen this morning before his shift have tightened, clenched in anticipation of what Thetis will hurl at him next. There are times when Harry has debated coming down onto this beach and yelling at her: she doesn’t seem to realize that her disappearances and reappearances have been nothing compared to Harry’s constant presence. She is the one who is out of line here. 

“He will not stay for you,” Thetis laughs, and the waves curl up on the shore like they can not get away fast enough, white-tipped and agitated, “He will not stay for a human.”    


Harry goes to work smelling of the lake and his own fear. 

* * *

Harry is all anxious energy when he gets home. Out of the pressure of the hospital, all of the noise finally gone, the voice in Harry’s head sounds so much louder:  _ you were distracted. You let her get to you.  _ As quickly as he’s ever passed through the living room, he’s climbing the stairs, fingers already working loose the knot of his bun. The tense feeling in his shoulders and back may never go away; Harry’s stripping out of his scrubs before he hits the bathroom, purple shirt strewn across their rug, shaky fingers lowering his pants and briefs all in one go. Fumbling with the temperature control in the bathroom, slippery shaky fingers against cold metal, Harry finally gets the water on. He knows that he must be trailing the scent of bleach and fear.

Louis’ steps start up the stairs just as the shower begins. Harry hasn’t bothered to close the door, but he wishes sharply that he had, that he’d locked it and gotten into the shower so his ruddy cheeks weren’t so easily recognizable. He’s never this careless with his scrubs.

Louis’ hands find his hips, jolting him out of his blind staring at the shower curtain, “Please let me shower.” There’s a tremor, barely audible in Harry’s slow bass, and his entire body is shaking and straining. If that didn’t give it away, Harry can’t remember another time he’s ever tried to pull away from Louis’ touch. Harry spent years aching for that touch. 

Louis presses his lips to the skin behind Harry’s heart, “What happened?”

Harry’s hipbones are sharp as he presses forward, blind panic clutching his throat, “ _ Please  _ just let me shower.”

The stillness of their bathroom is clotted with the smell of bleach, the uneven tripping of Harry’s heart. There have been truly awful moments in their life: when Louis left after they first kissed, when Harry had to run to Colorado and found Louis curled up in a chair in the airport, when they nearly didn’t come back here. This is worse. Harry just closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing. If he doesn’t breathe, he can’t get into the shower.

Thumbing over the dark ink stained into the skin of his hip, Louis sighs, “D’you want me to shut the door?”

Guilty, Harry’s shoulders collapse in relief, “Please.”

Louis presses his lips to Harry’s back to measure the thrum of his pulse for a few moments before letting go of him to leave the bathroom. It is tenderer than what Harry deserves. Steam is beginning to fog up the room. Harry doesn’t look over his shoulder as he pulls the shower door aside and steps in, his hair in dark ringlets that end up plastered to his shoulders. The harsh loofah they keep in here, mostly for the callouses on Louis’ feet, scratches across Harry’s skin. He doesn’t deserve a good shower. Not this time. Harry scrubs in angry circles against his face. Maybe he knows that Louis hasn’t left, maybe he doesn’t, when he wraps his fingers so tightly around the cross necklace he’s worn and closes his eyes. That little boy shouldn’t have to suffer for Harry’s emotions. 

He’s gotten better, throughout the hard years of nursing school and the constant neediness of Louis’ mom, at crying quietly. That doesn’t stop the protective curling of his shoulders and the stuttering, too loud hitching breaths he’s heaving from echoing in the shower. Harry shouldn’t have gone to work. He should’ve known, he should’ve--

Louis is finally turning to close the door when Harry says, voice shot, “Lou?”

Harry is never graceful: not when he’s in bed, not when he’s happy, not when he’s stumbling out of the shower and wrapping a towel haphazardly around his shoulders. He’s delicate, reddened eyes and rosy lips, dripping water everywhere even as he careens into Louis’ chest. Louis’ arms instinctively find Harry’s soft hips. Powerful relief flares even as Harry starts to cry against Louis’ neck, wet eyelashes fluttering weakly before they close entirely.

Louis strokes up and down the long line of his spine. Even through his own sobs, Harry can hear the gentle, soothing sounds that Louis makes. Harry’s shoulders and lower back are all tense, won’t give easily even when Louis does finally spread him out on their bed with Advil and a heating pad. This is going to hurt tomorrow too. When Harry has begun to tremble against Louis’ chest, Louis walks back a couple of paces, until he is leaning against the bathroom counter.

Harry’s arms tighten around his back, even as Louis begins to move pieces of his hair off of his forehead and the side of his face.

Louis whispers, “What’s wrong?” Harry sniffles: Louis bends in to kiss the tip of his nose, the wet places under his eyes that are soft with sleep, the rough skin along his chin, the cut of his cheekbones. He’s gentle with Harry’s face held between his hands, “What’s wrong, kitten?”

Resting his forehead against Louis’ nose, Harry whispers, “A boy died today.” It is not the whole truth, because Harry doesn’t know the whole truth, doesn’t know how to tell Louis that he knows that they’re running out of time, “Thetis—she—”

“Harry—”

“I really, like,” Harry’s voice gives out, “I thought we had more time. He was doing so well last night. And then she—she—”

“You did everything you could,” Louis’ voice feels like an extension of the smoke clouding up the bathroom, “Oh, my love.”

Sometimes, when everything feels like too much, Harry just needs to stand in the warmth of Louis’ grasp and cry. Between Louis’ mom and the little boy who died today, something’s got a tight hold of Harry’s heart, and at the softness of Louis’ voice, it gives a little bit. Harry heaves a breath before he’s crying, quietly, into the juncture of Louis’ throat. Louis doesn’t say anything. He just stands there and holds Harry, tighter and tighter and tighter, and suddenly, Harry knows. Thetis has been to see him too. 

* * *

Dinner is mostly silent. Harry feels drained: from the hospital, from Thetis, from watching this life they’re building slip through his fingers like sand. Louis sits across from him, bathed golden in the kitchen lights, and Harry’s entire chest threatens to go concave: how many more meals will they have like this? It has been lurching up his throat all day, the threat of his explosive anger, but then suddenly, it’s there, right in his hands, in his mouth, in the way he can barely still his shaking hands enough to set his fork down. 

Louis stills with a bite of food halfway to his mouth, “H?” 

Harry’s hands feel like they can’t stay still: he’s raking his hair back, he’s messing with the hem of Louis’ shirt, he’s moving his silverware around on the table without looking at Louis’ concerned eyes. It’s building in his chest; he has rarely allowed himself the luxury of anger. Thetis does not allow him anger. Harry has been too busy gathering up the moments he and Louis have had together and clutching them to his chest, hoarding them for the inevitable. 

One moment, it is a thought. The next second, Harry is pushing back from the table, decisively sweeping his hand across his end of the table until wine glass, plate, and silverware shatter and scatter across the floor. Louis sets his fork down quietly. 

“ _ Fuck,”  _ Harry can feel it still, vibrating in his fingers, “Fuck, shit--”

“Are you sorry?”

The words stop Harry in his tracks. He’s got shards of a wine glass scattered around his feet from his own impulsive anger and the hem of Louis’ white shirt, one of his favorite shirts, is stained burgundy. It is exactly the thing that Harry did not want to do. Still, Harry stands there and thinks about Louis’ question: is he sorry?

They’ve spent years together. There are places that Harry would’ve never seen without Louis, and there are parts of himself that he couldn’t have found anywhere but the woods in Colorado. No one makes him feel like Louis does. Even with all of Thetis’ bullshit, no one makes him glow like Louis does.

Harry does not stutter when he says, “Of course not.”

“I’m not sorry either,” Louis tilts his chin up, barely, defiant in the ruins of their meal, “They don’t let you be happy like this, and—”

Without thinking about it, Harry touches at the sailor’s knot wrapped around his right thigh. Louis’ eyes follow the movement.

“I wouldn’t give you up for the entire world,” Louis looks at the floor before looking back at Harry, “I won’t—”

Louis’ voice cracks.

“I won’t give her this too.”

This fight has been building all day. Since the moment Harry careened into the door this morning, sad and burning with the shame of allowing Thetis to shake him. He wants to yell, still, always, at Thetis. Will she allow Louis to stay? Will Louis actually betray his mother? It all snarls into a ball of horrible feelings that has been sitting in Harry’s stomach.

Harry looks at the glass on the floor. Then, he decides that he wants Louis more.

Louis is smiling indulgently when he wraps his arms double around Harry’s waist, when he pulls Harry into a soft kiss. Louis is smiling when he turns off the kitchen lights, when he traipses up the stairs in the moonlight with his hands tangled in Harry’s shirt, burgundy stained and torn, when he takes Harry’s hips in his hands. Louis is smiling when he presses Harry into the wall beside the linen closet in the hall, when he pins Harry’s hands above his head and nips at his mouth. Louis is smiling when he palms under Harry’s briefs, palms over the warm need of his cock. 

Louis does not smile when he says, “I’d never let her take you away from me.”

They only just barely make it to bed.

“Don’t want you to go anywhere,” Harry whispers into the space between their mouths.

Louis hitches a hand around Harry’s bare thigh, and his entire body bends with the pleasure. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry can see the possessive grasp and how it dents his skin, how Louis leaves love marks on him like a road map, “I’m not going anywhere, darling.” Harry can only nuzzle into the warmth of Louis’ neck, helpless with it.

Harry mewls, “Please,  _ want it.” _

In the light of the single lamp on the bedside table, Louis pulls back just enough to look at Harry’s face. Harry knows how he gets in this headspace, knows that sometimes he gets needy and loud, knows that every touch feels like it could break him. Harry feels a kind of grateful awe settle into his gut when Louis trails a hand up the span of his thigh, watching his reddened cock jerk in interest. They never have time for this kind of affection: Harry only gets like this when he feels safest, and he hasn’t felt safe in their relationship lately. Even with the house, it feels like Thetis has been here too. He’s drawing his fingers back and forth over his stomach, eyes half-mast when he reaches out to touch at Louis’ cheek, their bodies jostling together in the center of their enormous bed.

“How’re you feeling, darling?”

Harry’s cheeks pink as he smiles softly, “Really good.”

“Yeah?” Louis leans into the fragrant skin of Harry’s neck, his teeth sharp. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Harry can’t stop his legs curling around Louis’ waist or the way his nails bite into Louis’ back.

“How d’you want it, darling?” Louis could take charge, could tell Harry that he was going to lie on his back, that there would be no touching. Somehow, tonight, he just watches Harry squirm and push his bum down against the sheets, “ _ Darling _ ,” Louis anchors a hand back into Harry’s hair, “I’ve got you.”

Emerald nails moving against Louis’ back, Harry whispers, “Wanna suck you.”

Harry’s thighs are reddened, he knows. Beard burn, like an inkblot test of Louis’ kisses, combined with the crescents of his own fingernails, the furl of his hole. Harry feels powerful on the way that Louis looks at him: so unashamed, so eager, so languid, even in his arousal. In response to Harry, Louis bends down and kisses into the part of his mouth, tastes the frantic pulse of his arousal, the red wine they got on the floor. Harry’s lips relax into the kiss, suck on Louis’ tongue when he gives it to him.

“Okay, love,” Louis whispers when they part.

They work together to reposition themselves in the bed without having to stop touching. Louis propped against the pillows, keeping a hand on Harry’s back, on the smooth pull of his damaged muscles. The chiropractor Harry sees was explicit about no strenuous activity, and Louis is careful with him, overly aware of how straining their lifestyle is for a body that’s already not completely healthy. Harry nearly stops in the glow of the moon just to tell Louis that he loves him, that he’ll never love anybody else like this.

With his entire body between Louis’ legs, Harry’s eyes drift closed, his mouth lowering to Louis’ cock. The first kitten lick of Harry’s tongue is always like being jolted by a livewire, always pulls a moan from Louis’ throat. Harry loves that. It always makes him feel like the clumsy, sixteen year old boy with ruddy cheeks who’d never taken a cock before. They’ve grown together: the same mouth, the same eyes, the same splay of limbs stare down at Harry hungrily, even with the same icy hot patch pressed into the center of his lower back. Harry sucks cock like he’s starving for it, spit trailing down Louis’ shaft, a hand playing with his balls and the soft skin behind them. Louis’ fingers tighten in Harry’s hair when his hand and his mouth line up, his tongue laving against Louis’ slit.

When Harry deep-throats him, Louis arches off of the bed, murmurs a quiet, “ _ kitten,”  _ that has Harry dropping his weight back onto his haunches, the tip of his reddened cock dragging against the bed. The coil in Louis’ stomach feels like it’s being tightened, over and over, a delicious feedback loop lancing down his spine. Watching Harry get off has always been one of the fastest ways for Louis to get to orgasm, and it’s heady to know that they’ve somehow been hardwired together, that they have somehow found each other in this universe and maybe in every other.

“Babe, I’m gonna—”

With a popping sound, Harry rests his head against Louis’ thigh. Unable to resist nuzzling against the skin, he spends a moment teething at Louis’ golden skin. His cheeks are red when he whispers, “Want you to come inside, please.”

Louis moves his fingertips down to Harry’s face to let him know that he hears him, that he wants that too, “C’mere.”

Harry is clumsy with arousal: crawls over Louis’ thighs and his hard cock before settling heavily over his hip bones, large hands sprawled over Louis’ shoulders. Without thinking, Louis’ hands fall to the expanse of Harry’s lower back. It’s a bit of a break for both of them, a chance for them to catch their breaths. Everything slows in these moments. Harry exhales heavily, eyes falling closed, hands tightening and loosening on Louis’ shoulders, his hard cock smudging against Louis’ belly. Louis leans into the warm skin of his neck to kiss under his chin, to kiss at the hickey he left two days ago, the hickey he left yesterday, the smell of day old Burberry sweet on Harry’s skin, and back to his mouth when Harry begins mewling and tilting his head towards Louis’ lips.

“How’s your back feeling?”

Harry’s grin is sweet against Louis’ mouth, “It’s gonna feel better when you put your cock in me.”

Biting at Harry’s lower lip, Louis moves a hand down to circle Harry’s dry hole, “Medical school has done you well.”

“Mm,” it’s been years of practice, years of moving together, years of working their hips together, “just wanna get you inside.”

Louis is efficient and thorough in his fingering of Harry. It’s been years: the same prep, the same sloppy, swollen-lipped kisses as Harry begins to slur moans against Louis’ shoulder. Louis’ same careful fingers and distracting mouth and the sharp points of his canines in Harry’s shoulder.

Louis’ hands fall to Harry’s bum after a time that Harry has measured in kisses and moans, “Think you can take my cock?”

Harry’s curls bounce when he nods, “Want it.”

They come together easily, after years of practice. Harry’s nails biting into Louis’ neck and the faint smell of mint from his icy hot patch, Louis’s fingers gentle on the place where they’re connected, their foreheads pressed together, Harry finally seated on Louis’ cock. For a moment that feels suspended, they stay close. There’s always something urgent that surges in Harry’s stomach when he’s this close to Louis. He feels like he has to keep touching him, like his hands are responsible for keeping Louis together and safe and whole and loved. His hands look huge against Louis’ sun-golden shoulders.

There are nights where they fuck frantically against doors and the ends of beds and desks before Harry comes with a shout against his own tummy and ferns. Tonight will not be one of those nights. Louis runs a gentling hand up Harry’s spine as he begins to rock, close and warm, nails biting into Louis’ shoulder blades. When they make up like this, Harry gets this soft, warm, wanting look in his eyes, and he knows that Louis can’t help the way his heart immediately lurches with  _ take care of him take the best care of him. _

When Louis really begins to thrust up into Harry’s body, Harry can do nothing but mewl and allow his head to be pillowed on Louis’ shoulder, wavering moans in the air between them. In that moment, Louis looks down, just to check on Harry, and it’s suddenly so real.

Slowing his thrusts to grind deeply, Louis whispers, “I’m so in love with you, H. I absolutely adore you.”

Harry’s fingers clench against his skin, his cock blurting precome against Louis’ stomach. His eyes are wet, “Louis—”

“Could spend every forever with you,” Louis traces the ferns framing Harry’s cock before moving on to his thighs, the sailor’s knots, “Wouldn’t ever be able to stop touching you. Would learn how to say ‘darling’ in every language.”

All Harry manages to say is, “ _ oh my god,”  _ before he’s biting down on Louis’ shoulder and coming into the warm place between their chests and stomachs.

* * *

Harry wakes up to the softest of kitten licks against his sensitive cock head. His first instinct is to close his legs, to mewl because he’s tacky with his come and the lube that leaked from between his legs, that Louis fucked out of him, and there is something oddly, more so than normal, intimate about the way that Louis is cleaning him up, humming as he laves over the head of Harry’s cock again and again. Fingers opening and closing against the sheets, Harry tosses his head from side to side as a way to deal with the frantic little lightning bolts  _ zinging  _ up and down his spine.

Louis’ thumbs move gently over the round of his bum cheeks, where he’s got Harry spread open. Harry wonders how he looks: pinked up and trying to close on thin air, their lube on his fingers and on the bed and on his skin, his come dried up his chest and over his cock. Louis doesn’t seem to care, if the gentle way he moves around Harry’s slit before gliding his wet, soft tongue down Harry’s shaft is any indication. His tongue leaves behind a chill as soon as skin is exposed to the air, and Harry can do nothing but whine and cant his hips up, frantic for more than this cleaning that Louis seems intent on giving him. Somehow, it makes all of the difficult things between them recede to a place where Harry doesn’t have to examine them. 

The skin of Harry’s balls tightens, pink and hairless, under Louis’ careful tongue. Harry wants to be able to say something, wants to have something other than the stuttered “ _ Louis”  _ he manages to moan out between Louis’ tongue and the hot suction of his mouth closing around first one, and then the other, until Harry’s balls are glistening and cold, drawn up tight to his body.

Louis is laving over the vulnerable, fragrant skin of his inner thigh when Harry finally manages to secure a hand in his hair. It’s sweaty and caked in soot, the way that it only is after Louis has been working, and Harry knows this is a sort of apology, a sort of desperate attempt to not discuss what’s happened at the hospital. Still, Harry can’t help panting and the restless, relentless bending and stretching of his legs, fighting against the cresting pressure tugging below his belly button.

When Louis begins to move his tongue over Harry’s swollen hole, Harry can hardly think around the thickening of his cock again, the way he begins to plead, “Please, Lou, please,  _ please.”  _ He’s trying to stay quiet, like if he just keeps his voice low enough, Louis’ mom will somehow give them more time, Louis’ mom will finally think he’s good enough.

Harry bites down, hard, on the bare skin of his upper arm, muffling his cries even as Louis’ hands work to hold him open, Louis’ tongue digging in enough to find the taste of lube and make Harry’s thighs close around the outside of his ears. The laugh he muffles against Harry merely makes Harry shake.

It’s the quietest Harry’s ever been: hidden by the burning sun rising over the glassy lake and the towering trees, his mouth secured to his bicep, Louis’ mouth and tongue cleaning him carefully. He comes with a sob, with a  _ Louis  _ that feels an awful lot like an apology.

Harry comes down to the warm wetness of Louis’ tongue above his navel and a pair of hands cradling his hips. Absurdly, Harry wishes he were wearing something, a tee shirt or a pair of boxers, anything to shield himself from the open, searching look that Louis wears when he settles next to Harry on the pillows at the head of their bed. He smells like sweat and fire, and he’s probably smearing soot all over everything. Harry still turns, buries his face in the hollow of Louis’ throat.

“I’m so lucky that I get to love you,” Louis whispers, his fingers piecing through Harry’s long hair.

It makes Harry’s ribs feel like they’re curled too tightly around his lungs. They have conversations like this when things get really bad with Louis’ mom or with their jobs or when Louis comes home and finds Harry wearing his shirt for too many nights in a row. This morning, burning from the sun, from the shame of how much he wants with this golden god that was never meant to be his, Harry curls up against Louis’ side, as small as he can be, while Louis noses at his forehead, at his ear, at the unruly curls on the nape of his neck.

“I’ve loved you every second since I first saw you,” Harry nuzzles further into Louis’ skin, tries to carve out a home for himself somewhere between the calm of Louis’ heartbeat and the busyness of his wandering fingers, “I’ve loved you every hour, every day, every week.”

When Harry finally looks up at his boy, Louis’ got his prickly day old stubble. He’s looking so soft, so fond, that it steals Harry’s breath. They have moments like this sometimes, when Harry remembers that all of it is worth it, that Louis will and has always been worth it.

“Your hair never lies flat right here,” Louis’ fingers untangle a ringlet, scratch soothingly against Harry’s scalp, “Have I told you how much I love it?”

Because he’s feeling small and scared and needy this morning, Harry whispers, “Tell me again.”

“Have I told you how much I love these?” He’s brushing his fingers over Harry’s sparrows, the smaller one and the larger one, the most impulsive thing he’s ever done. Louis had been gone and nothing had made any sense, “I know I have.”

“Tell me again?” Harry repeats.

“This?” Louis’ thumb moves back and forth over his collarbone, his small palm splayed wide over Harry’s heart. It should be unnerving to have Louis so close to the uneven rhythm of his chest, the truth of how he feels all of the time.

Harry closes his eyes against the soft, searching way Louis is looking at him, “Again.”

“How about here?” His fingers count the steps of Harry’s arching ribs, flatten against his jumping stomach, follow the ravine of his hip bone. Harry can’t breathe. He’s not anything more than human and being constantly presented with Louis’ more than humanity can get overwhelming. The way that Louis touches him makes him feel so much more, “And here,” a hand hitching Harry’s leg around his hip, fingers just barely against the waves he has cresting right under his bum, “Here?” fingers moving so, so gently over Harry’s cock.

“Again,” Harry curls his hands around Louis’ shoulders, “again, please.” He isn’t sure, even as Louis kisses at his parted mouth, if he’s asking to be fucked or if he’s asking for Louis to continue talking.

“I love this,” Louis’ fingers send electricity up his spine as they rub across his gaping hole.

Harry holds on tighter, opens his mouth wider, “Again, please.”

* * *

They curl up against the seemingly monumental weight of Thetis’ question and Louis’ rapidly approaching decision. Harry feels, abruptly, young and betrayed. They have spent years shoring up a relationship that Thetis has always held the strings to. Harry’s chest lurches. He cannot stop thinking about it: not when they make dinner on Saturday, not when Louis hurtles into the cold lake on Sunday morning with a wide grin, and not when Harry joins him, naked and wet and so, so soft.

Harry is being held up against Louis’ chest, lulled by the water and the hand sweeping up and down his back, when Louis whispers into his ear, “’M going to talk to her tomorrow.”

Trying feebly not to freeze up, Harry nods. They’ve exhausted this conversation; like a boat endlessly waiting for a drawbridge to rise, this moment has stopped and stalled their relationship for as many years as they’ve known about it. Eventually, Louis was going to have to choose between him and Thetis. Harry cannot stop his arms from tightening around Louis’ neck.

Louis kisses Harry’s throat once before nuzzling into the wet, cold place behind his ear, “There hasn’t been a single second when I haven’t loved you.”

Harry fights against the emotion clotting his throat. Louis has always loved him. He knows that, he does.

“Please know how much I love you,” Louis murmurs.

Harry can feel Louis’ fingers attempting to soothe him through the sharp pain of his heart cracking in his chest. He fights it, fruitlessly: the tears always come when they talk about this. Water everywhere, water in Harry’s heart, water taking away the love of Harry’s life, and he still tries to fight it. Sniffling into Louis’ hair, Harry says, “Don’t go.”

“I’m right here, darling,” Louis tilts Harry’s face up.

With the sun glaring off the water and the reflection in Louis’ eyes, Harry feels the years they have loved each other stretched between them like red strings. They could be in the lake in Colorado or in the bathtub Louis gave Harry for their new home. Thetis could be standing right behind Harry, even as Louis leans forward to kiss at the places under his eyes, and they wouldn’t care. With a hand in Louis’ hair, Harry steers him towards his lips. Harry will accept no less than a lifetime of kisses.

Against Harry’s mouth, Louis whispers, “I adore you.”

Harry whimpers into their kiss.

* * *

“Thetis!” Harry yells at the lake. If anyone were to see him, they would think he’d gone crazy. “Thetis!” He bellows at the darkness. 

Harry had expected the yelling to loosen up the anxious knot in his stomach, but the futility settled deep into his bones will not give for a moment. His voice hurts, his head hurts, his heart aches. He has nothing to lose anymore. Louis will come back from his rare day shift soon. Harry doesn’t want to be seen like this: wild with his own sadness. 

“Thetis!” 

“Do not say my name again,” she rises from the water like an apparition. 

“Don’t take this from us,” Harry’s chest is tight, “Don’t take him away from me.” 

She does not move in the otherwise placid water, “That is not my decision to make.” 

“I love him,” Harry whimpers, “I’ve spent years--” the recalculation takes no time at all, “I’ve loved him my entire life.” 

Thetis does not blink, “Gods do not stay for humans.” 

Harry promised himself that he wouldn’t cry. He is weak with it, sick with it, and crying only makes the weight in his chest feel like a stone pressing on his throat.  _ There are no bargains between lions and men,  _ the letter whispers. Harry wants to rail at the stars: rip them down and throw them out and cut the moon from her watchful perch. Harry cannot heal this. 

* * *

When lying in bed alone has begun to make him feel anxious, Harry gets up to go and find Louis. Their house becomes skeletal at night; the staircase like giant ribs crawling up from their entryway, the living room and kitchen home to ghosts. They try to have people over on Saturday nights, usually. Nothing warms the place like Niall’s braying laugh in the entryway and Zayn’s smoke-smell trailing in from the deck. Tonight, Harry pads through the graveyard of their empty home and tries not to think about living here without Louis, without the warmth of his presence filling the rooms.

When Harry’s bare shoulders begin to tremble with the cold, he wanders into their living room to pull the fuzzy blanket off the back of the couch. Louis is there, just outside on the porch. The glimmering light has thrown shadows across his face and his strong arms, but Harry’s entire body reacts like a live wire. He’s never loved someone as beautiful as Louis.

Harry stumbles out their front door with the blanket caught up around his feet. When he looks up, he finds Louis smiling softly at him, his head just barely tilted to the side.

“Come to bed,” Harry toes at their worn deck to distract from the fear in the back of his throat. They were going to paint this, come summer, and Harry can’t stand the thought of not doing that. They had so many plans for their future. Harry wants to  _ marry  _ this man. Thetis is going to take that away from him.

“C’mere,” Louis responds, his eyes luminous.

The blanket stays tight around Harry’s shoulders as he crosses the deck to sit in Louis’ lap. They come together just like they always have: Harry’s too-long colt legs settling on either side of Louis, Louis’ warm hands spread wide across Harry’s waist, Harry’s curls dangling between them until Louis reaches up and clasps them in a single hand, like a ponytail, to put them behind Harry’s shoulders. Harry thinks about what it would be like to be with someone who didn’t know how to touch him like Louis does and a tear cascades down his cheek. He doesn’t want to be with anyone else.

“You look sleepy, sweetheart,” Louis thumbs at the bruises under Harry’s eyes.

“Can’t sleep without you,” Harry could curl up in Louis’ lap for the next week and a half. He’s spent so long worrying and thinking, mind running even when he thought he was too tired, “Come to bed.”

Louis kisses the furrow between Harry’s eyebrows, “I can’t stop thinking long enough to sleep. And now,” playful, gentle hands caress the splay of Harry’s thighs, “I definitely can’t sleep.”

Harry smiles, hunkering down into the warmth of Louis’ neck, “Why?”

“My darling is naked in my lap,” Louis’ voice makes the curls near Harry’s ear stir, “I want to eat him whole.”

Despite the cold, despite the knowledge that Thetis could be watching them from the water, Harry can feel his cock stirring against his thigh. Louis’ affection is familiar, glowing warmth against the skin of Harry’s thigh, “I love you.”

Louis’ hands are insistent as he feels out the contours of Harry’s jaw, as he raises Harry’s head so he can look into his eyes when he says,“You’ve made me incandescently happy.”

It feels fitting that the last time they may ever make love happens in the glow of the moonlight off the lake. Louis spends what feels like hours kissing him: a hand in his hair, a hand kneading at Harry’s bum, a hand fixed around Harry’s thigh, an anchor against whatever Thetis is planning. Just when Harry thinks that he may explode from it, Louis sinks down onto his knees. Louis has never made any secret of how much he loves Harry’s thighs and his bum. Even when Harry felt like he didn’t have anything worthy of admiration, Louis thought he was beautiful. He spends centuries trailing his lips and tongue over Harry’s inner thighs. Rome has fallen, and Louis is finally going back to Harry’s leaking cock. Entire body weighed down with sleep, Harry feels his orgasm rise and crest like a wave.

Harry doesn’t know how long he spends settled in Louis’ lap. The sun is rising, maybe, or Louis is glowing in the moonlight or the cosmos are making way for a new star. Not knowing, not wanting to know, Harry nuzzles back into the warmth of Louis’ neck. He falls asleep like that.

Harry wakes up on the couch in their empty house and goes to work. There’s nothing else to do.

* * *

The house is empty when Harry gets home from work. He’s been dreading this: walking through the front door to the same, rumpled couch he slept on this morning, Louis’ shirt still tossed on the chair out on their deck, everything silent and waiting. Somehow, the grey weather and tossing ocean make Harry miss Louis more sharply. If Louis were here, they would be curled up in their living room with a cooking show on. There would be a warm dinner. There would be lights on in the rooms upstairs. Through the windows, Thetis continues to stir the waves until they are seemingly berating the rocks. It is never good news when Thetis makes a ruckus. When the walking and aching has become unbearable, Harry goes through the methodical motions of bed.

Even that is unbearable. Harry can’t stand the heat in their bedroom anymore, can’t stand the stuffy air under the covers, can’t stand the restless way his legs keep pinwheeling against the bed while he worries about Louis, can’t spend another moment staring unseeingly at the fan on their ceiling and imagining the worst. The windows in their bedroom are finicky sometimes, refuse to open even when you coax them, but Harry still swings his legs over the edge of the bed and pads to the door that opens onto their patio. He spends long moments jimmying the handle up and down, pleading silently. As soon as the door gives, cooler air floods the room. It’s a cold night, a night that feels brittle like fall; soon, the lake will spiral into oranges and reds and yellows and the sounds of children’s screams.

Louis’ old fire department shirt doesn’t do much to cover up his legs. Goosebumps rise over Harry’s arms, his shoulders, pebble his nipples, crawl slowly over his stomach, make their way wonderingly over the sailor’s knots he has tattooed around his upper thighs. This is a night that Thetis would love: the crisp air, the sharp crashing of waves down on the beach. If Louis were here, he would’ve been down to see her. His cold feet, the sand grit that never quite disappears in their entrance hall, would’ve needed Harry’s warmth. Harry wishes, feebly, that Louis were with him, that he didn’t have to wonder whether or not he would come home safe. Louis shouldn’t be far when he is thinking of leaving Harry forever. Like an itch, like a phantom sense, Harry listens for the sirens that usually signal how his night will go: there haven’t been many sirens tonight, but that doesn’t ease the ache rising in Harry’s throat.

“You’ll catch a cold,” comes quietly from the door.

Harry would know that worn, fond voice anywhere. His heart gives a lurch at it, at the relief of finally hearing it after not knowing. Hands trembling, he turns around. Louis is seated on the end of their bed. He looks tired: there are circles under his eyes and, if Harry isn’t seeing things, his hands are shaking where he’s picking at his nails.

“I’ve got you,” Harry whispers, a smile tilting up his lips. He’s ready to get into the bed and curl up around Louis’ body, to share their warmth. Thetis would not have let him come back if he chose her. That would have been her final snub of Harry. An unstoppable wave crests and breaks in Harry’s chest, his entire body rising to the feeling. 

Louis just keeps looking up at him in his unwavering way. His eyes are narrowed just slightly, to see Harry better, and his mouth is soft, a vulnerable tick in the way he flicks his fringe to the side of his face, “C’mere.”

Mute, Harry makes his way across their worn bedroom floor. They’ve made so many memories here between the sheets, inside of their messy closet, on the familiar bed. Harry nearly stumbles under the thought that Louis could leave him in this room, alone. He couldn’t possibly do that in this room. A bedroom is no place to leave the love of your life. When Harry is finally close enough to touch Louis, he doesn’t, not fully trusting his ridiculously clumsy hands.

A small, calloused palm runs up Harry’s outer thigh, “How d’you feel about a fall wedding?”

Harry is so focused on the caress of Louis’ work roughened fingers that he misses what Louis is actually  _ saying.  _ Tonight has felt so tense to Harry that the touch feels like someone is holding steady warmth against his skin, against all of the places that he’s felt so cold. Harry’s eyes remain closed when he hums a quiet, “Mmm.”

Louis’ voice is softened with his laughter, “Did you hear me, darling boy?”

Warm, familiar fingers tug Harry forward into the center of Louis’ thighs. He goes easily, relief blooming in his chest; Louis  _ does _ still want him. Louis still wants to touch him, still wants to caress his love handles, still wants to kiss over Harry’s clothed sternum.

“Kitten,” Louis whispers against his neck, “how d’you feel about a fall wedding?”

Harry’s eyes snap open. “What?” His voice, even to his own ears, sounds raw.

Everything has narrowed to this room, and the way that Louis’ smile broadens as he rises from the bed, just to sink onto a single knee against the worn floors that Harry loves. Harry can’t think. His entire mind has become white noise, tethered only by Louis’ warm, comforting touch against his hand. Harry wants to remember everything about this moment. A trembling hand placed over his mouth, Harry repeats, “What?”

Louis’ thumb soothes over Harry’s knuckles, forward and back, “I told Thetis that I didn’t want any of it if I wasn’t with you,” Louis’ hand is shaking around his, and Harry can only snuffle into his own hand with wide, watery eyes, disbelieving, “I don’t—There aren’t any happy heroes, darling, and I can’t be—Without you, I don’t stand a chance,” Louis gestures at himself: his slim hips, his powerful thighs, his brilliant blue gaze, “I told her that I had my life, right here. Thetis is gone, we’ve nothing to worry about, and I said that—”

“I’d marry you tomorrow,” Harry’s voice is hoarse, “I’d marry you right now.”

Blue eyes like the sea, Louis says, “You’ll marry me?”

Harry has been waiting for  _ years  _ to marry Louis. An entire life is spread before them like a panorama, and suddenly, inconceivably, the future is within touching distance. Harry can hardly speak through the lump in his throat, but he nods fervently, curls bobbing along with his motion. Bathed in white moonlight, it all scarcely feels real.

Louis rises to his feet, his eyes crinkling with his grin, “You’re the love of all of my lives.”

Strong, capable hands wrap around Harry’s wrists and pull them away from his mouth. Harry feels as if he is waiting for Thetis to find her way into their bedroom, as if she may still show up and complain about how feeble and human Harry is, but she isn’t. Louis is human now too. Together, they can finally build a life.

“Darling—”

Harry throws his arms around Louis’ body. In the bright moonlight, they sway, laughing breathlessly into each other’s necks, like exuberance has replaced their blood. Nothing feels real, but they settle together like two ships on a rocky sea because it is the only thing they have ever known how to do. Harry thinks back to the boy who was sixteen and missed his mom so dreadfully, who was terrified that no one would ever see past the rumors, who was terrified of loving someone who had the power to not love him back. As Louis slips a blue ring onto his finger with trembling hands, Harry sends that small, scared boy back home. Harry sends that boy to a warm bed where his mother is waiting, a soft smile on her face. Finally, Harry assures that same, pale-skinned boy who was so soft hearted in that lake in Colorado.

__

_ He’ll stay. _


End file.
